The Story:
“What did you do with my Puppy Chow!?”
This is how I woke up a few days ago. My roommate stormed into my bedroom because she had searched the entire apartment all morning long looking for the 3 batches of chow I made the day before… and she couldn’t find it. Well of course she couldn’t find it, I hid it from her! Whenever I let her eat my stuff, she gets bad at me after because she says I’m making her fat. But when I hide the treats from her, she says I’m being mean. Now I know how guys feel when they say they can’t do anything right.
If you’re in the Salt Lake City area I will be having a book signing Saturday March 23 at the Seagull Book at 1720 S. Redwood Road in SLC from 10-12, I hope to see you there!
Chocolate Hazelnut Puppy Chow
Ingredients
- 7 C. rice Chex cereal
- 1 C. milk chocolate melts or chips
- 1/2 C. Nutella or any chocolate hazelnut spread
- 1 1/4 C. powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2-3 C. hazelnuts roughly chopped
Instructions
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1. Place Chex cereal in a large bowl and set aside.
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2. In a small microwave proof bowl, melt chocolate, Nutella and vanilla extract. Stir until smooth.
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3. Pour over cereal and gently fold until all cereal is coated.
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4. Dump into a large plastic bag and add powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Shake until coated. (Or you can use a large pot with a lid.)
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5. Dump onto cookie sheets to cool and add hazelnuts.
Hey! Are you doing any other book signings? I’m from Portland and think it’d be cool to do one the next time you’re in town!
I will have a few in May there!
i wish you can come to Arizona!!
I’ll be in Mesa the weekend of May 4th!
Come to Houston!!
Is this the one you said is to die for or do you have more up your sleeve? 🙂
I have more coming 🙂
I need to make this! It looks great!
This looks AWESOME!!! You really are determined to undo my diet!!!
This looks so good! i cant wait to try it! in fact, i am making it right now!
Lizzy~I don’t usually write to people, but I just have to this time. I tried to make the Hazelnut Puppy Chow…twice. 🙁
It didn’t work either time. I am doing something wrong when I melt the chocolate. It becomes hard and too thick to “pour” into anything. On my second attempt, I heated 10 seconds at a time, stirring between heatings and still…hard as a brick. What am I doing wrong?
I’m so sorry! It must be your chocolate, because melted chocolate turns smooth. Use melts next time, they are the chocolate “disks” you can get in the bargain bins at some grocery stores or you can get them in little packages.
I took some cake decorating and candy making classes a while ago and they said that if you heat chocolate too much it will thicken up. If you are using a microwave, heat the chocolate for short periods of time and stir in between heatings. When there are little bits of chocolate still visible you should stop heating and just stir until they are gone. Hope that is helpful!
Yes! That’s what I do 🙂 Chocolate burns easily
Actually, it’s the vanilla. I was so frustrated when I combined the chocolate, nutella, and vanilla extract in the microwave. It always came out hard. Further microwaving only burned the chocolate. I recommend melting chocolate in the microwave by itself, then adding nutella. When I melted the chocolate by itself, then stirred in the nutella, it was very smooth. However, only when I added the vanilla (after microwaving the chocolate, then adding nutella) did the chocolate turn into a hard dough-like ball. I just bought the vanilla too, so it’s nowhere near expired. I highly recommend leaving the vanilla out of this recipe. I hope this helps everyone!
I too tried this recipe 3 times one day. I have never any trouble melting chocolate. My guess was it might be the vanilla so thank you for the confirmation . I will try again as I bought more nutella and chocolate!
I’m having the same issue and it is the chocolate seizing. I think it’s either one of two things:
1.) Overheating the chocolate (scorching can cause seizing).
2.) Water was added to the melted chocolate (probably the vanilla extract).
Any kind of normal chocolate will seize if water is added when it’s melted. So I’m guessing the “melts” (a specific type of chocolate drop to be used for sauces) have some kind of fat (cocoa butter, shortening) to help prevent seizing. So it’s probably best to get the melts in the future. 😉
You can save chocolate that’s been seized by water. Just google “seized chocolate”. I guess you can probably save scorched chocolate the same way, but it might not taste so great.
Some vanilla extracts are made with water, these will make your chocolate seize up. High quality vanilla is made with vanilla and alcohol.
How much vanilla do I use?
I pulled vanilla from the recipe because I lot of people use vanilla that will cause their chocolate to seize up. Just omit it to be safe!
FYI the recipe directions above still mention the addition of vanilla extract in Step 2, even though you took it out of the ingredients list. I was definitely confused! You may want to remove it from the directions so others don’t have to search the comments 🙂 Love the recipe, thank you!!
I am interested in making this recipe but it doesn’t say how much vanilla extract to use.
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