Cookie Chunk Puppy Chow

Unless you were an all-together un-American child, chances are good that you indulged several hundred times at least once in a nice big handful of puppy chow during your younger years.

Image via Wikipedia

I personally haven't had any in quite some time but when I very first started blogging, I came across this post for puppy chow by Framed. It chronicles her creating the puppy chow, but more entertaininly her efforts to capture this picture:

*photo found here

ok #1) how adorable is that picture? and #2) how freakin' well-behaved is that dog?!!? my dogs would have devoured that entire bowl in about .5 seconds.

Anyways, today I was baking up another batch of Chocolate & Peppermint Bark Cookies for a cookie exchange I'm going to tonight. I needed to make 3 and a half dozen "cookies" so I decided to trim the edges off these before cutting them so they would be nice and square:

Problem...that's a lot of cookie to be cutting off and wasting and it just wasn't sitting right with me. So, not really certain what exactly I was doing, I started cutting the edge pieces into bite sized chunks:

Since some of them already had chocolate on them, I decided that sounded pretty good. But you know what sounded even better? Chocolate, butterscotch and peanut butter. That's right...I ran right into the pantry and came out with 1/3 bag dark chocolate chips, 1/2 a bag of butterscotch chips and a jar of peanut butter. I added a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter to a bowl, topped with chips and melted in the microwave:

Then I poured the whole mixture over the cookie chunks:

 

 

Then I ate the whole container. 

Kidding! Stir to combine:

 Then I added in the remaining 1/4th of the bag of toffee bits I had from making Toffee Chocolate Squares because really, when was I ever going to use those again?

 At this point I wasn't really sure what to do but I felt like the chocolate needed to harden, so I dumped the bowl out onto a silpat...and suddenly inspiration struck (I remembered that picture). If I added powdered sugar, they'd be pretty much just like puppy chow. So I did.

 Don't ask me what possessed me to do this on a flat surface instead of in a ziploc bag, or a bowl even....it wasn't pretty, but it worked out:

 And finally,  as if today wasn't already good enough, (I took my last final this morning, I don't have to go to school for 3 weeks, I went to the gym for the first time in forever...) when I came home from the gym there was a PACKAGE waiting for me!!!!! It was from the lovely Ms. Amanda at My Switch to Scrubs and it was my first blogger gift exchange package!! Yippee!!! (can you tell I like packages?)

Here's what was inside!

 

How cute is that? Red and green cookies!!! Red Velvet Chip and Mint Chunk. Even though I'd just come from the gym, of course I sampled both of them- I especially like the mint!

 

Thanks Amanda!

Enjoy!

--Lindsay--