2 big boxes of Rice Krispies
5 10oz bags of marshmallows
1 bag of red licorice
butter
red air-brush icing
wax paper
baggies
ribbon
The way that this sort of thing begins is with an idea.
I can trace back for you how the idea came to me.
I picked my kids up from daycare and grabbed my free copy of the NickJr magazine that the daycare lady gives us and took it home. It had some travel suggestions in it so I thought it possible that I'd browse through and see about some random weekend thing the girls and I could do. Like camping. The magazine made it's way from room to room as everyone but me browsed through it.
So last night, after dinner, I suddenly remember that I need to bring snack for the game today. It's my turn. Resigning myself to running into Boerne to hit Wal-Mart, I told my mom and asked if she'd keep an eye on the girls. She says she will but "didn't you see that cute little recipe in the magazine for the baseball shaped popcorn balls? It was so cute, it had red licorice on it for the lines...."
A little light bulb dings itself on over my head and I for some insane reason decide that we should make those. That would be so cool. All the other moms on the team will be utterly impressed by my creative ingenuity and throw flowers at my feet as they wish they were as cool as me.
Ok, well not really.
Instead of Wal-Mart, I run down to the new Dollar/Grocery Store down the road from my house. I don't usually shop there and have only been there twice. Why? Because it's not a dollar store. It's a big convenience store, complete with convenience store pricing. And instead of popcorn, we decided to make rice krispies treats.
I get everything I need and head back home where I begin melting marshmallows and butter and my mother tried to devise a way to cut the licorice into smaller pieces.
Now, let me let you in on a bit of top secret information that you may not have been privy to prior to reading this little entry.
Rice krispie treats do not like to be round.
That's right. The little effing balls would much rather be pressed into the baking pan as the directions mention. So many of my balls fell apart and had to be pressed back together, sometimes requiring the use of some Melted Marshmallow Glue (patent pending).
I fought with these balls for the course of about two hours before deciding that rather than continue to shape them, I would shape them and then wrap them in wax paper, so they could retain the round shape I so desired and I could maintain my sanity.
This is where my mother's part comes in. Make the little licorice strings stick to the rice krispie balls. Seemingly easy task right? With a little help of my Marshmallow Glue, it should have worked. Alas, work it did not. It was as though the licorice and the balls were opposite ends of a magnet and refused to bond. God damn them.
That left my mother and I sitting there covered in butter and little rice krispies, trying to figure out how in the sam hell we are going to make these balls look like baseballs.
And then, I remembered the "air brushing icing" I had purchased for some other brilliant idea I had many moons ago. Was it red? I couldn't remember. I located it on the shelf with all the other cake decorating junk and sprayed a little into the sink.
Bingo!
The fun part was next. Pick up the ball, reshape it for the millionth time and spray red lines around it before it fell apart, wrap it quickly in wax paper and tie it off.
The whole while realizing that the other mothers were much less likely to bow at your feet with the edible abomination you would be presenting their children for snack.
The end result:
Lessons learned:
Never begin a barely thought out made from scratch snack at 8:00p on a school night.
Always have red spray icing.
Do not pick up free magazines.
Always put butter on your hands previous to attempting to shape a rice krispie treat.
Never tell your mother you need to get snacks for the game.
Always have a back up plan.
PS. Watched American Idol, want to marry Blake Lewis.
Labels: Amanda, American Idol 6, Being a Chic, Being Mommy, Being Retarded, I'm a loser, my crazy life, softball
