Welcome to our first Hump Day How-To! Today I bring you one of the simplest recipes ever to come across my eyes ever. It also involves almost no mess which is always fun!
I can’t take credit for this idea. I have no idea who originally thought it up, but I saw a “life hack” picture of it on pinterest once and while not a Frenchie Original, it certainly is a Frenchie Staple. Funny enough, we don’t even have an actual name for it. We call it like we see it in this house.
So first, the recipe because that’s what’s important:
Total Time: 15 min,
Yield: varies, 30 ‘cookies’ per standard Ritz box
Ingredients: 1 box Ritz Crackers, 1 Bag Rolos candies (standard batch. You could make 200, you could make 1 if you really wanted)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 345ºF
- Place one sleeve Ritz face down in single layer on foil or parchment paper
- Place one Rolo on each cracker
- Bake for 4 min
- Remove from oven
- Top with second cracker to complete the cookie
It’s literally that easy. You can play around with temps and time but if the caramel gets too melty, it gets everywhere when you place the second cracker down, so beware.
For those of you who like a lil’ exposition and some photos, keep reading. For anyone who took the recipe and ran: same.
There’s really something special about a sweet and salty combo and even though I love a nice handcrafted pastry that takes all day and wows the entire county, quite honestly, in the kitchen I am lazy. I like to eat food. Making it, ehhhhhh. Combine that with my next level procrastination skills, and a 15 minute no-mess recipe is really my jam.
If you have a partner (or child! Kids love jobs!), unwrapping candies goes even faster. Because nothing is expanding like an actual cookie would, you can jam as many crackers as you can fit on your baking sheet.
I like to bake mine on foil because I usually make at least 100 of these bad boys which requires several cooks. I find the foil easier to remove from the baking sheet and lay on my table to cool easier than parchment paper.
You could move them individually to a cooling rack if you wanted to but, again, lazy.
Be careful with the crackers. After years of making these, there’s one thing I’ve learned that a lifetime of snacking on Ritz and PB never prepared me for: the difference in flakiness from box to box. This particular batch had hardy crackers, but I’ve had whole sleeves of crackers that crumbled the second they touched down on chocolate—no pressure applied!
So when adding cracker #2, treat it gently, like you aren’t going to smash it and all of its friends with your teeth later.
Honestly these are so simple, quick, and inexpensive to make, even the most unenthused-about-donating-food-to-events person (that’s me) can throw a couple of these in a goodie bag and have a grade A bake sale item!
If you try this out, tell me how many you ate when you ‘tested’ them. Then tell me how many you really ate.
Me, I’m going to go devour the rest of this tray.
Until next time!
Frenchie Leigh 