Butterscotch-Chocolate Corn Flake Treats
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter 170 grams
- 10 ounces mini marshmallows about 1 bag
- 5 ounces mini marshmallows about half a bag, optional
- Scant 1/2 cup butterscotch chips 80 grams
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 9 oz Corn Flakes cereal about 7 cups
- 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate finely chopped (no chocolate chips)
- Flakey salt optional
Instructions
- Have all your ingredients ready and measured out.
- Grease a 9x9-inch tin and line with a piece of parchment paper so that there’s a bit of overhang on the sides.
- Brown the butter. In a large dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Cook the butter, stirring and scraping the bottom occasionally, until it begins to bubble and pop. When you no longer hear bubbling and popping — that’s when all the water has been cooked off and the browning process will happen very quickly, so keep both eyes on it. Continue cooking until it starts foaming and you can see brown flecks swimming in the butter when you stir. Remove from heat immediately.
- Pour in the marshmallows and stir with a rubber spatula to cool off the butter slightly. Then, dump in the butterscotch chips, vanilla and salt and stir vigorously until all the marshmallows are melted and the butter is totally incorporated. There should be enough heat from the pot to do this but you might need to return it to the stove over very low heat to melt the remaining marshmallows.
- Dump the Corn Flakes in and fold the mixture until it’s 90 percent incorporated, then fold in the remaining mini marshmallows, if using.
- Spread the mixture into the prepared tin and tamp it down with the rubber spatula. Ensure it gets into every nook and cranny of the tin by wetting your hands slightly and pressing it so it’s level and reaches all the way to the edges. Set aside to cool.
- Make the chocolate topping. In a large heat-safe bowl over a saucepan with an inch of barely simmering water, add the finely chopped chocolate. Melt, scraping the bowl often until there are just a few lumps of unmelted chocolate, then remove the bowl from the pot and allow the residual heat to melt the rest. Spread the chocolate evenly over the bars then top with flakey sea salt, if desired.
- Once the chocolate has fully set and the bottom of the tin is cool to the touch (about 1 hour) remove the bars from their tin using the parchment as a sling. Cut with a long, sharp knife into 16 or even 25 squares.
Notes
If you don't have a pot or dutch oven big enough to hold the corn flakes, just add them to a large mixing bowl. Prepare the other ingredients in a sauce pan or medium/small dutch oven and pour the mixture over the corn flakes in the bowl instead. Then add the extra mini-marshmallows, if using.