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Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats

Source of Recipe

From "The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook" by Deb Perelman


Recipe Introduction

"When my son was six weeks old, we brought him a brown fleece sleeper with eyes and ears sewn onto the hood, and a long tail coming out the back, that was described at a store as an 'infant monkey costume,' and decided to take him to a friend's place for a Halloween party. Prior to having a kid I would never, ever show up at a party empty-handed. There might be a layer cake if it was someone's birthday, or boxes of cupcakes. I'd make brownies or blondies or hand pies with bourbon in them. I baked, people drooled; that was my thing, it's what I did. But the whole arrangement hinged on leisure time, which I was now clearly bereft of. And so I tried to figure out what I could throw together with ingredients from the bodega in no time whatsoever, and came up with this. And I have not been to a party since where at least one person didn't ask for them. If you're like most people (including me, before that evening) you probably don't think that things as exquisite as Rice Krispies Treats need reinventing. They were never broken, after all, not for a single day since Mildred Day of the home-economics department at the Kellogg Company thought to apply marshmallows and melted butter to the puffed-rice cereal in 1939. And to her credit, I didn't change terribly much, I just added a bit of finely textured sea salt, used a smaller pan so that the treats would stand tall and square, and increased (cough—doubled) the butter, toasting it first until it was brown and nutty. But it changes everything. The fleece-clad monkey conked out cold the second we got there, by the way, as soothed by the crowds of friends in a dim apartment with good music playing as we were. Obviously, he was one of us."

List of Ingredients

â—¦ 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
â—¦ Heaping ¼ teaspoon flaky sea salt
â—¦ One 10-ounce bag large or miniature marshmallows
â—¦ 6 cups puffed-rice cereal (about half a 12-ounce box)


Recipe

Butter an 8-inch square cake pan with 2-inch sides.

Brown the butter: In a large pot, melt 1 stick butter over medium-low heat. It will melt, then foam, then turn clear golden, and finally start to brown and smell nutty. Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. Don't take your eyes off the pot: You may be impatient for it to start browning, but the period between the time the butter begins to take on color and the point where it burns is often less than a minute.

As soon as the butter takes on a nutty color, turn the heat off, sprinkle salt over butter, and stir in the marshmallows. The residual heat from the melted butter should be enough to melt them, but if it is not, turn it back on over low heat until the marshmallows are smooth. Be careful not to cook the marshmallows, which will destroy their stretchy softness; you're just looking for enough heat so they will melt and smooth out.

Remove the pot from the stove, and stir in the cereal, folding it gently with the marshmallow mixture until the cereal is evenly coated. Quickly spread into prepared pan. I use a piece of waxed or parchment paper that I've sprayed with oil to press it firmly and evenly into the edges and corners and smooth the top, though a silicon spatula works almost as well. Let cool, then cut into squares and get ready to make new friends.

Makes sixteen 2-inch squares or thirty-two 1-by-2-inch bars