Bittersweet Treats with a surprise!

Chocolate became front and center again for the Weekly Wednesday Treat Day with these Bittersweet Peanut Butter Krispie Surprise Balls. The title doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, but hey, it tells you what it is!

These babies take Rice Krispie Treats to a whole new, dark chocolate level that we think is not to be missed. You'll find your typical ingredients - butter, the cereal and marshmallow - but they are slightly tweaked to give them an edge. I used unsalted butter, but then gave the mix a hefty pinch of salt to slice through some of the excess sweetness that is inherently in this type of treat. When the butter had liquefied, rather than tossing in whole, chunky marshmallows to melt down, we used our creamy pantry friend Marshmallow Fluff! Also at this point went in a hefty amount of chopped bittersweet chocolate.

When the chocolate had smoothed out, in went the mound of rice cereal to be tossed around the pan until each piece had a chance to be in contact with the gooey, chocolate marshmallow pool. Scooped out portions (a tablespoon cookie scoop is great for this!) of the cereal were then placed into individual wells of a regular muffin tin that I lined with paper liners to make clean up a breeze. When twenty four cups had been filled, we pulled out our secret surprise - miniature dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups!

I didn't know these actually came in dark chocolate, but when Jeff saw them at the market this weekend, they were in the cart before I had a chance to say anything!

Once we set the peanut butter cups on top of that bottom cereal layer, another scoop was placed over the top to hide the candy inside. As if these weren't crazy enough, a drizzle of melted butterscotch chips were added on top for a contrasting jolt to shake up the treats with a little pizazz. You could, of course, use peanut butter chips, more bittersweet chocolate or even white chocolate, depending how you want to dress theses up!

If peanut butter cups don't tickle your fancy (and if they don't, why not?!), how about trying a small candy like Rolo's for a caramel version or even those flavored chocolate Kisses to change up the surprise? I can see many variations of these in our future, especially when the bake sale season starts up and we need a different type of treat to bring!

Recipes
Bittersweet Peanut Butter Krispie Surprise Balls