I used to make cereal bars professionally, which is a sentence I imagine few people can say. Likely just me, a handful of bakers, and the folks at Kellogg’s. It was one of the many regular items on the menu at a bakery I once worked at. I suspect that the dispensary down the street drove a lot of the demand.
I can vividly remember spreading the gluey batter into deep hotel pans, and letting the bars set for as long as the morning rush would allow. I then sliced the sticky mass into thick, three-inch tall slabs, stacking them like bricks on a cake stand. They were often one of the first items to sell out in the case. One customer only came in for the cereal bars.
All this is to say, I know a thing or two about cereal bars. I have burned my fingertips on the molten marshmallow goo enough that some of my fingerprints may be missing. I learned how to perfectly compress the mixture for the neatest edges (more on that later), and also toyed with my formula enough to have arrived at my perfect ratio of cereal to marshmallow. Never content to just make them with Rice Krispies, I experimented with Fruity Pebbles and Cap’n’ Crunch, but to me the perfect sugary cereal for the job is Cocoa Puffs and thus these bars were born.
What’s In Cocoa Puff Bars?
This recipe began with the idea of feeling like a kid again. Sticky, messy, and oh-so sweet, cereal bars are equal parts nostalgic and tooth-aching. In an effort to address the latter of those two qualities, I formulated what I colloquially call an “adult” cereal bar, although kids are bound to love them too. They’re still essentially melted butter and marshmallows plus cereal, but with a few key changes.
Browning the butter first imparts a nuttiness that keeps the bars from being one-note, while rich melted chocolate adds bitterness that balances the sweetness of the marshmallows gluing the mixture together. Cocoa puffs on their own aren’t really all that chocolatey, so the melted semisweet chips pull double duty, also helping enrich the cereal with more chocolate flavor.
A final sprinkle of flaky salt, a direction you may be tired of hearing from recipe developers and chefs, really does make a difference. It’s that kiss of salt and crunch needed to ensure that these bars don’t veer into the too-sweet category.
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Tips For Making Cocoa Puff Bars
Although this treat is simple, there are a few tricks that ensure they come out perfectly.
- Brown butter can burn in an instant, but one clever way to know it’s almost ready is when it goes quiet. That means the water has mostly cooked off, and the milk solids will then soon start to brown. At this point, you’ll want to keep a close eye on the mixture.
- When cooking the marshmallow mixture, you want to make sure to remove it from the heat when a few lumps still remain. Just like with melting chocolate the residual heat will do the rest, and you won’t scorch anything.
- Greasing a sheet of parchment paper and using that (greased side down) to compact the mixture is an easy and less messy way to get the mixture into an even layer. The cooking spray helps the paper pull away cleanly from the treats.
- For thinner bars, press the mixture into a nine-inch square pan instead, although truly any pan you want to use will work.
