Goodness, Gracious, Great Gobbler Goodies!

This weekend is the annual Pack 303 Family Campout at Erwin Park.  We always try to go once the weather is cooler.  I think we achieved that.  With an overnight low predicted to be in the upper 30’s, I’d say it’s cooled down just a bit.  I’m still trying to be excited about sleeping outside with the possibility of frost on the ground.

This year, we have an agenda with several activities planned for the campout.  Activities other than last year’s famous “Let the kids run around with a football until only one is left standing” or the perennial favorite “It’s dinnertime, do you know where your children are?” parental scavenger hunt.  One of this year’s activities is a Cub Scout dessert bake-off.  Many of the Webelos scouts will be utilizing the Scout tradition of dutch-oven cooking to create sweet treats for us to enjoy.

Trey, however, is not a Webelos scout yet, so we did our dessert-creating at home.  In a kitchen.  Where it was clean, and warm, and we had utensils and could wash our hands.

I gave Trey several options of what he wanted to make.  Believe it or not, Trey already has a repertoire of two dessert recipes of his own.  So I offered him the choices of his famous Golden Brownies (eerily similar to Mom’s well-loved Chocolate Chip Blondies) or Puddle Jumpers (chocolate cookies with M&M’s), or something new.  Much to his mother’s delight, he chose something new.  So last night we created “Gobbler Goodies!”

Sure they didn’t come out as picture-perfect as the cookbook, but they are cute, nonetheless.  And in the right light, with your head turned just so and your eyes squinted just a bit, they really do kind of resemble turkeys…a little bit.  But the important thing is we had a blast doing this together.  Crisana helped me measure out the marshmallows and rice krispies.  Trey took his turns at stirring the marshmallows as they melted.  They loved rubbing butter on their hands and shaping the treats into balls.  And they thought – as I often have – that chocolate frosting makes the best “glue” EVER.

Here are a few pictures of our creations.  I have posted directions on how to make them below the fold.

The recipe makes 28 little Gobblers.  We only made 27 because I allowed the Rice Krispies treats to cool a little too long and they stuck to the pan.

DIRECTIONS:

1/4 c butter or margarine

4 cups mini marshmallows

6 cups Rice Krispies cereal

28 Oreo cookies

1-1/2 c chocolate frosting

1 12-1/2 oz. pkg. candy corn

In a large saucepan, melt butter.  Add marshmallows; stir over low heat until melted.  Stir in the cereal.  Cool for 10 minutes.

With buttered hands, form the cereal into 1-1/2 inch balls.  Twist cookies apart; spread frosting on the inside of BOTH SIDES of the cookies.  Place 1/2 of a cookie under the cereal balls to form the base of each turkey.

Place three pieces of candy corn in a fan pattern on the remaining cookie halves; press each cookie half onto a cereal ball to form the tail.  Attach one piece of candy corn with frosting to form the turkey’s head.

Yield: 28 servings

Recipe taken from Taste of Home’s Quick Cooking Annual Recipes (1999) Cookbook