Take your treat to work day

Last week, while working crazy hours and developing an addiction to caffeine and Laffy Taffy's, I had a really yummy popcorn ball from the cute small-town grocery store. It's been years since I've had a popcorn ball. I always thought of them as shellacked with colored goo. This popcorn ball was more like a rice crispy treat, but with popcorn and candy corn! 

I was trying to come up with some way to thank the folks who came out to help with my project, and the yummy popcorn balls were on my mind. That might have been because I have tried to cut out as much sugar and processed carbs as possible since I've been back to detox from the bad habits picked up last week. But, I thought that these would be a simple, tasty treat.

I figured I could just make the marshmallows like I would for rice crispy treats, that is butter and marshmallows in a bowl in the microwave. I used unbuttered kettle corn. Since it's after Halloween (you'd think it was Christmas by looking at the stores, but that's a topic I'm not going into here), the candy corn was 50% off at World Market. And, what would a treat be without sprinkles.

I probably should list Pam as an ingredient because I had to keep spraying my hands. The first ball was so easy, the second got a bit sticky, but I pretty much has to wash the third one down the drain as I cleaned my hands. After that, I sprayed regularly and finished up. I hope everyone likes them.

Oh, and since I had taken off the afternoon to recover from my week long stretch of crazy work, I figured I'd have time to do all kinds of things, including work on blog posts before it got late (oops). One of the things I put on my list was to make chocolate chip cookies for a team meeting tomorrow. I've been talking a lot about bringing chocolate chip cookies but just haven't had the time at home, the energy or the ingredients to follow through on that promise. That is now remedied. One comment on the recipe - I used dark brown sugar since I had it and it looked like it might make more moist cookies. The cookies are pretty much like my normal choco chip cookies, but more brown. They aren't burnt but I swear they look darker than normal. We'll see how folks take to them tomorrow.

Last oh - I also cut up sweet potatoes so that I can make Slow Cooked Sweet Potato Chili tomorrow. I'll tell you all about it later