So, if you decide you want to try out an old recipe, but you're running low on time and confidence, what do you do? Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but apparently I got for no-bake cookies. I mean, what could be easier than no-bakes?
Cue sudden flashbacks of nearly burnt chocolate and hard as a rock peanut-butter Karo mixtures.
Okay. Let’s just ignore that.
And if these particular no-bakes just happen to use grape-nuts? Well, that could be interesting. Not something I’ve ever run into before but heck it could be a lot weirder.
I pulled this sucker from Quick and Easy dishes, a 1968 cookbook that may have been published by Southern Living in their early years.
But maybe not originally…
It’s kind of weird, cause a lot of these recipes, all submitted by home-ec teachers, are not from the south, Jean B. Weaver, who submitted this recipe, included
I’m also choosing to ignore the non-southernness of this ‘southern Living cookbook’.
The ingredients list at least isn’t too bad.
Ingredients:
12 oz. of chocolate chips
1 can (14 oz. ) sweetened condensed milk
1 c. grape nuts
The first step is melting down the chocolate. the recipe doesn’t specify what variety, so I guess it's whatever we want to use. Admittedly, I’ve done this recipe twice now (stupid camera deleting stuff) and I preferred half semi-sweet and half milk chocolate.
As long as the chocolate's decent it shouldn't matter much... I used
store brand the first time and… well… it just wasn’t as good. That whole
only-three-ingredients thing, remember? The main thing you taste is the
chocolate, so I went for something a little higher quality this time around. Also, I used a double boiler (well, improvised equivalent) ‘cause I wanted to try out this technique, but the microwave works too. Whatever, as long as the chocolate doesn’t burn and you don’t get any water in (seized, clumped up chocolate sucks).
Ah, looks go so far. Now, to add the sweetened condensed milk, which I really should have warmed up a bit first… didn’t combine as easily with the chocolate as I would have liked. Oh, well, lesson for next time.
Now to add the grape nuts… which I didn’t get a picture of. That whole warming-the-condensed-milk thing again. The chocolate just wasn’t cooperating and I wanted to get the cereal mixed in. The flashbacks of failed and nearly-failed candy were seriously creeping upon me here.
I finally got it mixed up though and plopped onto a sheet. The original recipe says to put on paper, but I didn’t have parchment paper and waxed paper and no-bakes don’t mix in my experience (no one should have to worry about eating paper, seriously). Greased aluminum foil worked just fine though, so crisis averted.
My thoughts-
They look… interesting… huh? The ones I dolloped out after they cooled a minute actually look a little better. They didn’t run quite as much. They all taste the same though, fortunately. They taste pretty good. The malted flavor of the Grape nuts comes out nicely, and the half-semisweet/half milk chocolate was a good decision, well for me at least. The texture… the feel of the chocolate is good, my husband compared it vaguely to fudge, although it doesn’t have the same smoothness. As to the effect of the cereal, they were best on the first day. They had a nice crunch initially, but that was gone by the next day. The chewiness after wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t as good.
Grading this thing on a scale of 1-5:
Appearance- 4
Odor/Scent- 4
Texture- 3.5
Taste- 4
Overall a 4/5 -Pretty good recipe overall, with one or two issues. They were easy, tasted pretty good, and they were different from the norm; but the texture softening after the first day is a bit of a drawback. My taste-testers actually preferred standard no-bakes instead.
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