Foodie Night In: Cereal Clusters

I'll be the first to admit it. I fall for the buy one get one deal all the time. I usually find myself in the supermarket with my very innocent list of only things I need. Equipped with my coupon organizer (Yes, I have one and I'm only 23!), I always end up seeing something that I have a coupon for AND it's buy one get one free. How can I say no? Well, I don't and this is how I ended up with two huge boxes of Multi-Grain Cheerios. I finished the first one for breakfast about a month ago, but the other box kept looking at me from atop the fridge just asking to be opened. So, I accepted the challenge and decided to make cereal clusters. Now there are a million different ways to go about this. First off, you need a binder to keep the cereal together, honey, peanut butter, chocolate are perfect for this.

I wanted something semi-healthy, so I chose honey. Then I added in some chopped almonds and some cinnamon and sugar in a large metal mixing bowl and added in the cheerios at the end. Here is a rough estimate of the ingredients, since there is no baking you can take out or add in anything you want really:

3 Cups of Cheerios

1/3 of Organic Honey

1 Teaspoon of Cinnamon

1/2 Cup of Chopped Almonds

1/3 Cup of Sugar (this can be omitted, since the honey is sweet enough)

 

Once everything is mixed all you have to do is line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spoon the amount of mixture you want into clusters. Put in the fridge for at least an hour. Mine didn't really hold well together, I think I will add in some corn syrup next time :) Remember, you are not bind to any of these ingredients. Switch out the cereal, add different nuts/dried fruits, or combine more spices together. There are endless possibilities! Take a look at this recipe that was just a little more successful:

3 Cups of Wheat Bran Cereal

1/2 Cup of Crunchy Peanut Butter

1 Bag of Semi Sweet Chocolate (what's that? About 10 ounces, probably?)

Process was pretty much the same, except I melted the chocolate and peanut butter together in a double boiler. Then I added the cereal to it, spooned it out on parchment paper, and refrigerated for half an hour. Took these to work and none were left!