Monday, March 9, 2009

Cornflakes taste like corn, duh

A few weeks ago I had this conversation with my oldest daughter.

Aimee "Mom, don't we have any cereal?"
Me "Didn't your dad just buy some cornflakes?"
Aimee "Yeah, but they're gross"
Me "Why are they gross?"
Aimee "Because they taste like corn"
Me (after spitting coffee out my nose) "Um, yeah genius, that might be why they call them CORN flakes"

In other words, they weren't Frosted Flakes and therefore tasted like cereal and not sugar.
So for weeks they have been in the pantry and have become a joke around here. "Where is the lemonade mix?" "Behind the cornflakes that taste like corn". I've been trying to figure out what to do with them since it's painfully obvious that none of my kids, or my husband are going to eat the cornflakes that taste like corn.

Yesterday I remembered having a couple of recipes that called for cornflakes as an ingredient that I had learned to make back in either junior high or high school foods class. Amazingly they are a couple that I have already typed up and put into my recipe binder. One of them is for Christmas Holly Wreath Cookies, and since it's a little past Christmas, I didn't want to make those. The other one was for peanut butter bars. They came out just as yummy as I remembered. Here's the recipe.

1 1/2 cups of sugar
3/4 cups of corn syrup
2 cups of smooth peanut butter
7 cups of cornflakes

Melt the sugar and corn syrup. Add the peanut butter and stir until smooth. Remove from heat. Add cornflakes and mix it all up. Pour into a wax paper lined 13x9 baking pan. Smoosh them down (I wrap my oven mitt with the Glad cling wrap and then smoosh). Cool. Once they are cool, you can cut them into squares.

Let me just take this moment to mention that it's a really good idea to measure out all your ingredients BEFORE you start the sugar and corn syrup melting. When you are ready to throw in the peanut butter is not really a good time to discover you are about a quarter cup short. I went ahead and made them anyway, but in retrospect probably should have reduced the amount of cornflakes a tad. They came out a bit crumbly. Either that or I didn't smoosh them down enough.

Of course I also forgot that Tiffany is the weirdo kid that doesn't like peanut butter so she was a little disappointed come snack time, but the other two liked them, and I used up most of the cornflakes that taste like corn.

2 comments:

LenaLoo said...

Lol, sounds like my husband: "We don't have any cereal" when there is a box of "Healthy Cereal" sitting right in front of him...

Alexis AKA MOM said...

My hubby is so bad he'll eat frosted flakes then pours sugar on top of them, really what is up with that?

These sounds so yummy! I'll have to do them with the boys! You're so sweet, I'm glad my semi homemade cooking can give some yummies to someone else. ;)