Brilliant Corners, London: Wonderful Japanese Food, Weird Name, Atrocious Service

      Welcome to the first installment in my “Challenge Accepted” series, inspired by Barney on “How I Met Your Mother” but having literally nothing to do with the show! Today’s post answers the request of my friend Sari, who asked for a way to make amazing Rice Krispie-like treats without marshmallows. You could sub a vegan marshmallow, such as Dandies or Sweet N’ Sara, into the standard recipe, but a) that gets freal expensive b) that’s not very exciting! So, a treaty crisped rice treat using other ingredients??

     One of my favorite things to do, as faithful readers might have realized, is to melt chocolate with a nut butter or Speculoos (or both) and stir shit into it. It’s a foolproof, always delicious, and extremely versatile method of cookery. So, it makes perfect sense to use this as the basis for this creation! 
      When making Rice Krispie treats, the important thing is to make some kind of glue to hold the cereal together. Melted marshmallows do this very well, we know. But do you know what else can make a great gluey substance? Nut butters melted with liquid sweetener. Once you get this basic aspect down, you can play with it in all kinds of ways depending on what you’re in the mood for, or even just what you have on hand. No brown rice syrup? Agave or maple syrup will work! No cashew butter? Peanut butter, Speculoos, almond butter, hazelnut butter…you pretty much can’t go wrong with substitutes. In fact, I would have gone with cashew butter when making these, but I’m all out, hence today’s treats are peanut buttery. I also decided to make them chocolatey, because when you have the option of chocotizing something, you take it. 
    This recipe is a rough guide of what I did today, rough because you can really do whatever you want in terms of ingredients and amounts and it’ll probably be delicious. I used a mix of all 3 types of sweeteners, but it will work with just one (though all agave might be too sweet). I was also just using peanut butter, but then halfway through I smacked my head and said “What are you doing!” and added some Speculoos. Because duh. 

      If you want a more traditional treat, forego the chocolate and swap cashew butter for the peanut butter, and you’ll have a milder base flavor that is more akin to what you are used it. Next time I have cashew butter on hand, I’ll make it that way. But using peanut butter and chocolate is never a wrong move. I hope you enjoy it no matter what combination of ingredients you use. And now we all can see that marshmallow-less can mean delicious, and not just, sadly, ‘without Marshall “Marshmallow” Errickson’, as I am. Thanks Sari!