S'mores Puppy Chow

Puppy Chow... Muddy Buddies... Whatever you want to call them, they are delicious.

Made it through my final preseason of college volleyball... I know it is only the first week of the season but I feel accomplished after sitting out for two years for ACL reconstructions.  Every year during preseason we go on a retreat (every other year it is a trip, but this year it was a one-night stay at a camp about an hour from campus). On the retreat, we get teamed up into meal groups and have a little friendly competition making the different meals for everyone. It was actually during last year's competition that I kind of conceptualized the idea for this blog (My group made this awesome lemon garlic-roasted chicken with green beans that I have been meaning to post for a while... Promise I'll get to it). This is my fifth preseason (man, I'm getting old), and it has pretty much always ended up that I've been placed in the dinner group (usually for dessert my group would make fruit pizza--another recipe I should definitely post--which got interesting on our trip to Puerto Rico when our oven wasn't working). This year, I got breakfast. We made The Incredibly Easy Breakfast Bake, which I thought would be good to make the night before, cover, and then just have to heat up in the morning. Unfortunately, our epic game of capture the flag went late, so we just had to get up earlier to throw it all together.

We also had to make a snack for around the campfire following said Capture the Flag game. We considered S'mores--I mean we were around a campfire, what else would you snack on? But then Courtney (the genius behind the Pizza Crescents and reigning Superbowl Cook-Off Champion) found this little gem on pinterest. A whole slew of Puppy Chow recipes including.... dun dun dun... S'mores! It was so so so good (It was hard to take a picture because the girls in our group couldn't help themselves from snacking on it while we made it). It was great because we made it before,  portioned it out into baggies, and then passed the bags out around the campfire.

Special thanks of course to my amazing group: Courtney, Jordan, Anjali, and Kate

I wish I had gotten a photo of Adam, one of our assistant coaches, roasting the mini marshmallows over the fire and stacking them between golden grahams.

S'mores Puppy Chow
Recipe from Your Cup of Cake

Ingredients:

• 6 cups rice Chex cereal
• 1 cup milk chocolate melts or chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup brownie mix (from the box--or a combination of powdered sugar and cocoa powder)
• 3 cups Golden Grahams
• 3 cups mini marshmallows

Directions:

Measure out Chex cereal into a large bowl and set aside.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate, peanut butter, and vanilla extract, stirring occasionally, until smooth.

Pour over cereal and fold until covered. Dump into a large plastic bag, pour brownie mix over cereal and shake until coated (Note: we didn't have a big bowl, so we threw everything into the bag a step early, shaking and kneading it until covered with chocolate and then adding the brownie mix).

Pour onto a cookie sheet and let cool (not sure how long we actually did this... the kitchen we were in was a MILLION degrees so I think we just kept cookin' along).

Dump into a large bowl and add the golden grahams and marshmallows. Mix everything together and viola! Perfection :D

The original recipe also suggested some variations, including substituting 1 cup crushed graham crackers/golden grahams for the brownie mix (I personally don't know why you would do that.. the brownie mix was the best part)... you could also coat the marshmallows in melted chocolate.

Anjali, one of our freshmen,
 shaking things up