There’s a candy here called “Clodhoppers.” They were created in Winnipeg, and have kind of spread throughout North America. I used to be obsessed with them in junior high. A bag of them goes for about $5-8. Around Christmas time, at the craft and bake sales, there’s a company that sells a similar product, in a much smaller container, for $7.

I was munching on a bit of this stuff this morning and thought “hey, I could do this.”

So I did. And it was easy!

How easy? About as easy as making rice crispy squares.

Ingredients:

1. 4 cups of Golden Grahams cereal (Or something similar, made of graham crackers. If using white chocolate, I’d add a bit of cinnamon).
2. 2 cups of chocolate (I used milk, but I also like white).
3.  1 cup of chopped nuts (I used peanuts; cashews are good too).

So, what I did was pretty simple: I melted chocolate, mixed in nuts and then mixed in cereal. Then I spread it on a cookie sheet and stuck it in the fridge to cool. Once they were hard(ish – more on that in a sec), I broke them into bite-size pieces.

Since I used chocolate chips, however, the chocolate didn’t harden as much as I would like. If you prefer softer chocolate, great! It’s not exactly messy, just slightly sticky. If not, I’d suggest tempering the chocolate and cooling it on wax paper (we had run out of paper, which may have helped even if I hadn’t tempered the chocolate).

This is a crazy good recipe, for several reasons. The number one reason, for me, is the potential to have quick and easy candy at a moment’s notice. Bye bye 2am trips to the closest 24 hour convenience store! Also, it’s nearly Christmas. DIY Clodhoppers in a cute little jar sounds like a pretty nice, inexpensive gift to me! I got double the yield of candy for about $7 by doing this myself.

Saturday November 12th 2011 — 3 Comments
✯ Posted under { Photography • Recipe }