I have a confession ...

Well the past 14 months have been peanut butter free at our house and I will admit, I MISS PEANUT BUTTER!! I miss a quick PB&J sandwich for lunch. I don't know if it is because I am pregnant but I have been missing it more and more lately. Besides, certain recipes for baking are just not the same without peanut butter. I love to bake and especially this time of year with lots of parties and sharing of treats. I would make peanut butter bars, muddy buddies, no bake cookies, etc. The one thing these all have is peanut butter. We discovered Nutella within the last 6 months or so. I don't know why we never tried it before but as Micah can have hazelnuts we gave it a shot. Still not the same in a sandwich but we make due.

Recently I have been finding ways to make recipes from scratch with replacement ingredients. It has been great because that boy loves cake :) With Peanut, egg and milk allergies there are lots of store bought treats we can not enjoy anymore. Clint asked me to find a recipe for Nutella Chex Muddy Buddies. I found a couple of them today and tried them. I must say they turned out really well! Although maybe it would have been better not to find them lol!

I will share:

Nutella Muddy Buddies (this is for a half batch)

5 C Rice Chex

1/2 C Chocolate Chips

1 C Nutella

3/4 C Powdered Sugar

Measure out Chex cereal and put in bowl. Combine Nutella and Chocolate chips in a sauce pan over med/low heat and stir until melted. Pour chocolate over cereal and stir gently until evenly covered. Put a little of the powdered sugar in gallon size Ziploc bag and pour cereal into bag**. Sprinkle a little more powdered sugar over and close bag and shake to cover cereal in powdered sugar. Then enjoy!

**Note I realized I was out of big baggies after I did the mix so I poured a little powdered sugar in the bottom of a gallon size pitcher. Then added half the cereal mixture added a little more powdered sugar then the rest of the cereal and shook it to mix. It worked pretty well, I may keep doing it that way to save a baggie in the future :)

Mint Muddy Buddies

5 C Rice Chex

3/4 C Andes Mint Chips - or chocolate chips with a few drops of mint extract

2 Tlb butter

Directions are the same as above only melt the butter then add the mint chips and stir until melted then follow the usual directions.

This was a great find just before Christmas :)