Chow for the Puppies

I'm at it again. We're having another bake sale at work. This bake sale is a benefit bake sale for one of our doctors. This doctor was diagnosed with cancer last fall and had a below the knee amputation on one leg. While most people would give up hope or take their anger about their illness out on others, he hasn't. He has presented a can-do positive attitude through out this whole ordeal. I'm not saying he doesn't have his moments of sadness or maybe even anger but he doesn't show them to his co-workers or patients. The man is truly an inspiration to be around. And because he's been such an inspiration and because I like to bake, I'll be going overboard for this bake sale. Last night I made puppy chow. I'm really hoping that the puppy chow will sell like it did at the bake sales when I was in grade school. (We'd practically fight over it.) I had decided to make it before I had a recipe so I did a quick search on allrecipes.com. (one of my favorite sites, of course) The recipes featured the same ingredients with a few variations: peanut butter, butter, chocolate, Chex cereal and powdered sugar.

I measured out the peanut butter, butter and chocolate chips and started them melting. I dumped the cereal into 2 big bowls and poured some powdered sugar in a paper sack. Stirred the chocolate mixture a few times and it was ready to pour over the cereal. I had made puppy chow in the past and made the mistake of pouring all of the chocolate mixture onto the cereal at once. Remembering my previous mistake, I poured a little chocolate on the cereal and stirred it to coat. I repeated that process until all of the cereal was coated with chocolate and then dumped all of the cereal into the paper sack. The most fun of making the puppy chow is the last part: the shaking of the paper sack to coat the cereal with powdered sugar. Word to the wise: a mist of powdered sugar will hit you in the face when you open the bag... be prepared, it's not as pleasant as it sounds. I put the puppy chow in little baggies and it's good to go!

I'm also going to make peanut butter fudgy bars and M&M cookies for the bake sale. I've enlisted Steve's help for tomorrow's baking.