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On today's episode of Clairey Creates, I'm tackling a thing I've never tasted and have barely heard of. It's Star Crunch. Stars are huge glowing balls of gas primarily made of hydrogen. They produce energy through nuclear fusion. Stars release heat providing light to their surrounding systems like our sun does for Earth. Woah, cookies with caramel and crisp rice. That's all it says. It doesn't smell that bad. All right, I'm going to break one open.
All right, so they have a kind of like caramel pull when you break them apart. And there is definitely a cookie in there. It's like a single layer of puffed rice all that's all the way around that is encasing this soft little cookie. Did you say? Like basically all snack foods, the texture is good, the flavor is bad. Someone wants to explain something to me this way. I was talking to a baker about bread, and he was like making bread is the process of taking your raw materials and making them as big as possible. Like taking the smallest amount of materials and making and mixing them together and making them as big as possible.
The same is true for snack foods. For obvious reasons. It's like you're going to make more money. It's like you take your raw ingredients and you do your like factory magic and you make them like super light and airy. And then you can sell more. And also like that is our brains like that texture. So it's like it is very light, the rice is crisp, the cookie is tender. You get like a crunch, you get like a little chew, it's like all great textures, but the flavor is not good. A little molasses-y. You really get hardly any chocolate flavor. You don't really get caramel flavor. That all comes across more as texture than flavor. And like other than that, like it doesn't really taste like much.
It doesn't It really doesn't. This is one of the longer ingredient lists. First ingredient is corn syrup. Probably not surprisingly. Sugar, crisp rice \{parentheses\} rice flour, sugar, whey, barley malt, wheat flour, salt \{close parentheses\}. Oh, sorry. Hold on. All right. Enriched bleached flour \{parentheses\} wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate \{bracket\} vitamin B1, riboflavin \{bracket\} vitamin B2, folic acid \{close parentheses\}.
Palm and palm kernel oil, whole grain rolled oats, water, palm and soybean oils with TBHQ and citric acid to protect flavor, molasses, raisin paste, whey. Contains 2% or less of each of the following: cocoa, corn starch, salt, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, dried eggs, natural and artificial color flavors, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, soy flour, dried egg whites, leavening \{parentheses\} baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate \{close parentheses\}, annatto color, annatto extract, chocolate, cocoa butter, citric acid, cocoa processed with alkali, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup, modified corn starch, modified wheat starch, nonfat dry milk, pectin, polysorbate 60, polysorbate 80, propylene glycol monostearate, red 40
lake, sodium citrate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sorbic acid to preserve freshness, sorbitan monostearate, soybean oil, titanium dioxide, turmeric extract. It's quite a list. The fact that it's whole grain rolled oats, molasses and raisin paste, it's like that tells me that's the same cookie that we made for oatmeal cream pie. Maybe not as thin though. It's not as wide and it's not as thin. I think they make the cookie. I think they coat the cookie in like a caramel. They then coat it in the puffed rice and then they dip it or it gets then enrobed in like this chocolate coating.
So, in my mind I was like, "Oh, you mix the rice with this like chocolate caramel mixture and then you somehow form it around the cookie." It's like, "No, I think it's done in stages. I think it's the cookie is dipped, coated, and dipped again." And that's why you have some of this chocolate coating pooling on the bottom. I think that pull is coming from a very thin layer of caramel between the rice and the cookie. I'm just going to cut it so I can get more accurate measurement. This makes it really clear. It's like there's chocolate, rice, caramel, cookie, caramel, rice, chocolate. The diameter is 6 1/2 cm or 2.5 in.
The thickness is 1.7 or 1.8 cm. This is the thin layer of caramel. The cookie itself is like 7 mm. So, the cookie when baked is like 5.7 cm. And then I'm not going to bother to measure any other thickness because just coating's basically and then the rice is the rice. Puff the rice, bake the cookies, make the caramel, coat in caramel and puffed rice, make chocolate coating and coat. Recreate Star Crunch Rice, take one. The only reason I'm not pushing back harder on making my own puffed rice is cuz I have a rice cooker which I love. Best gadget ever. And I use it a lot. So, I'm going to use it to make some white rice and I did do
basic research. It's actually kind of It was like weirdly I didn't find that much online about like making your own puffed rice at home, but I know the basic method, which is like you make it, you dehydrate it, you fry it, and it puffs. My concern is like anytime you puff anything, it's like you the outside is dry, the inside has moisture, and so when you expose it to like high heat really fast, the internal moisture turns to steam and it puffs, and then the outside is dry, so it you know, you get this like hollowing out effect. My concern is that it's going to require like a very specific hydration that I don't know what that is, and I have no way of measuring it. So, I'm just going to have to like trial
and error it. But, the first thing I want to do is get my rice cooking. So, We have a lot of different kinds of rice because my toddler is like loves rice. I want just like a It doesn't look like a long grain rice. Do you know what's really interesting? It doesn't list rice as an ingredient. Like, why is puffed rice not just the ingredient? Instead, it says crisp rice, and then it lists rice flour, sugar, whey, barley malt, wheat flour, salt. So, it's like the puffed rice is not even rice. All right, what about a
What about just plain long grain white rice cuz I do have this bag. What about jasmine rice? We have Grape-Nuts and some really old-looking pecans. Star Crunch rice, take two. Even though I have 17 different kinds of rice at home, dried rice, none of them were great for making your own puffed rice. So, Cal ran out literally 10 minutes there and back and grabbed the gas station rice. It So, this is pre-cooked parboiled long grain rice. I've never I really know what that is. Oh. It almost already looks like puffed rice. Should I just microwave it in a 2-quart microwave-safe bowl?
Submerge one bag of rice. I don't I hate having the microwave on for 10 minutes. I'm just going to cook it stovetop. Bring water to a boil. Boil until warm. I'm going to stick this bag in here. So weird. 8 to 10 minutes. So I set a timer. Star Crunch Rice, take three. So the rice is ah fully cooked. I'm going to get it into onto my trays. So I'm going to get them spread out. I guess you have to dehydrate them because if the outside isn't dry, then they're not going to puff, I guess.
Is how it works. So I'm going to get this into my toaster oven. And the toaster oven, it's on the highest dehydrate setting, which is 176. I might start it higher. And then I don't know. It might not be high enough, but it does have a fan going, so that's good. All right, so I'm going to get these into the toaster oven on dehydrate. Every 45 minutes or so, maybe I'll come and stir to make sure they're drying evenly. And then while that is dehydrating, I'm going to pivot to the cookie. Recreate Star Crunch Cookie, take one. So I went back and I reviewed my process and ingredients for the Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie Cookie recipe. But on that one,
I was going for a super thin, soft cookie. And so I made a few modifications in order to get a cookie with like a little less spread, a little less soft. In that cookie version, I also added some warm spice that I feel like the cookie as I think functioning more as like a base and a texture thing, and I don't really want I want the flavor to kind of actually be like the caramel and the chocolate. And so I'm not adding the warm spice. I also had turmeric for color, and I'm not adding that either cuz I don't need that. I don't think it's important. It's the last ingredient.
The tur- Yeah, but I don't think I need it. I don't think it's so important. Like the color of the cookie. Like I don't think that's fundamental to like the experience of eating. It is kind of yellow. I should put some turmeric in it. Okay, fine. Basically, what I'm doing to make the texture a little firmer and to have it not spread as much as I am increasing flour, I'm decreasing butter, and I'm decreasing baking soda. Everything else I'm keeping the same minus the warm spice. The first step was I cooked down because raisin paste is like a key ingredient, and I would then realized it's actually really important to the flavor.
The first thing I'm going to do is start to cook down that raisin and oat mixture. So, and one thing I realized kind of I think I actually realized it more after the fact and not even at the time. The cooked oats really, really help to like retain moisture in the cookie and it's probably what makes it soft and chewy and nice. So, I have some old-fashioned rolled oats. Like golden raisins. Another thing that occurred to me is I think probably the color of the cookie. My guess is they use dark raisins. And that's probably why the cookie is like darker. So, then a half a cup of milk and a quarter cup of water.
This is just what I did last time. So, I'm going to put this on the stove and get this cooking. I want the um I want the raisins to start to break down and the oats to really soften. And while that is warming up, I'm going to grab my food processor and process the dry ingredients. So, for the dry ingredients, I have my This is 1 cup of old-fashioned rolled oats. I'm increasing the flour. The more flour, the stiffer the batter, the less spread. So, I increased it to 1 and 1/4 cups. Then I have 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder. This is what I put in the original. Uh I'll do maybe a half teaspoon or so of turmeric, which is I think what I put last time.
Call that a half teaspoon. Just for color. Then this is a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 tsp of baking soda. I had 2 tsp baking soda before for the oatmeal cream pie. I have this whole thing on backwards. No matter how many times I use my food processor, I'm always putting it together a little wrong. It's not right, is it? It is. All right, so I just want to grind up the oats. All right, then I'm going to assemble the rest of the cookie dough in the food processor.
I have a cup of packed light brown sugar. One stick of butter, so I decreased the butter. I think I had 10 tablespoons in the final cookie for oatmeal cream pie and I'm going down to eight. The more butter generally the more spread in a cookie. So, this mixture is boiling. I'm going to turn it down a little bit. I'm just mashing it to break down those raisins. So, while that's cooking down, I think if I'm remembering what I probably did was first process that um oat and raisin mixture to make a smooth paste and then I went to this step, but we're we're just going to proceed. So, I'm going to just process this until it's like nice and creamy.
And now my remaining ingredients besides my dry mix and my oil. The oil is there to maintain some like flexibility in the cookie. I have a third of a cup of molasses. Some vanilla extract and I'm just going to wait for my raisin mixture to be really soft. So, I'm just going to keep kind of mashing it, cooking it and then I'm going to let it cool and then we'll finish putting together the cookie dough. And I have my oven on 350 ready to start baking. Recreate Star Crunch Cookie take two. Here is my raisin oat mixture. I'm going to scrape it into this little bowl. And it's a little malleable. I'm going to try to cool it off quickly because I
don't want to add it now. It's really hot. It's going to melt all the butter. Kind of change the texture in a way I don't want it to. So, I'm going to get it into this bowl. So, now what I'm going to do is make like a little ice bath for this mixture. The raisins were really pretty old and dry. So, they didn't break down too much. They just kind of plumped. But, they are going to get processed and broken down. I might just let this hang out for a second like that. Recreate Star Crunch Cookie take three. This mixture has cooled off nicely. So, I'm going to take it out of the ice bath. And now I'm going to add it to that butter sugar mixture.
Guys, I just made like a oatmeal with Yeah, with raisins. All right. So, now process this until it's really smooth and the raisins are in a paste. Okay, I'm going to add my egg. I'm going to add my molasses first. Stream that in. Ah. Annoying. All right. That's it. I'm going to actually transfer the batter into this bowl. Get out of the food processor. I'm I'm to let it rest for a minute or two while I got my baking sheet set up cuz if I remember from the oat milk cream pie episode it sets up quite a bit as it sits. So, let me just do that and I'll get my
baking sheets ready with some parchment. Statistically speaking there is other life out there in the universe because it's just like the universe is infinite, so it's like even if the chances of us existing are one in you know, billions with like the conditions on Earth like if the chances of it also occurring somewhere else are exist, you know? Is that right? But do I think that it's like someone like out in the desert of Arizona like saw it? Probably not. Maybe, I don't know. Okay, so let's take a look at the consistency. It's pretty loose. Let's see what happens if I just kind of like dollop it onto the baking sheet and bake off a test. These are sort of tablespoon size blobs. I'm not so worried about the
shape. Obviously, they want to I want them to be round. I have a recipe for like a chewy caramel. I'm going to look up that. Recreate Star Crunch Cookies take four. So, like 5 or 6 minutes in to the cookies baking I turned on the oven light and they look really good. I'm I'm feeling hopeful. So, I'm going to pull them out and take a look and just see. It's been 6 and 1/2 minutes. They're super soft. They I don't think they're done yet, but I'm feeling good about the spread and the height. Like I'm just going to put them back in so they finish baking.
Maybe a few more minutes. If I need to make a modification, the most likely modification is more flour, and that's a super easy thing to add here. So, once I do this test, it'll really just be about dialing in the quantity. Like, I might maybe I pipe them or something to get them really uniform because I need this circle that is 7 mm thick and 5.7 cm in diameter. I'm actually going to look for a ring cutter that's maybe going to help me make that shape and is really, really close to the size that I need. Like, let's let's look at this one. So, there's that trick, especially with soft cookies like this, it works really well, where you encircle a cookie straight out of the oven with a ring cutter to make it really even and
and round. All right, this is a sev- This is a 6-cm diameter cutter. This could be great. Just like quickly give it like a little shimmy around the cookie. All right, so they're definitely a little on the larger side. They're a little too big. Another nice thing about using the ring cutter is you can actually kind of like bulk like you can kind of scrunch them together so that they turn out a little bit taller. The key is that you have to do it right out of the oven. While these cool, I'm going to stir my rice that has been dehydrating. I want to just keep it moving so that it dries evenly.
Okay, I can tell by looking at it cuz the grains have shrunk that they are definitely drying out. I just remember reading that they have to be pretty dry, the grains. Some of them are sticking to my fingers, but in general, it seems like in just the 40 minutes they've been in there, maybe, they've they've dried out pretty well. I'm a little worried that they're drying out really unevenly, so I'm kind of like trying to get them mixed together so that some of that moisture transfers onto the drier ones. What? Oh, Phil. God, Phil, Phil, you scared me. Let me see. I might transfer these into a single sheet, and I have a jelly roll pan, which is actually more the size of this Silpat, so I'm actually going to
switch this up a little. So, I'm just going to spread this in an even layer and get it back into the toaster oven, and I'll probably stir it a little more frequently, just to make maybe every 15 minutes, just to make sure that it's dehydrating at the same rate because like definitely the edges get drier before the ones in the center. In the meantime, let's check on those cookies, and if they're I mean, I might make some little tweaks, but like so far, so good, and then I'm going to start baking off several. Okay, so I think they're they're underdone. I didn't bake them long enough, but I just want to take a look. Like it's so soft, it's almost hard to get off of the parchment. It's like super underbaked. and get a general sense of the
thickness. It's almost too soft to touch even. Okay, so the thickness like I am actually right at 0.7 0.7 cm, which is the right thickness. Definitely encircling with that ring cutter helps to create a more even thickness. So, it's like you're not getting the sloping down along the edges that it's more of that thickness all the way through, which it is what I want. Let me taste it. They're like a it's like a very tasty cookie. So, like a little raisin-y, nice chew, but it's also light.
Right? It's pleasant, yeah. No, I like it. And the softness is good. I just need to bake them longer. So, what I might do is that was about a It was sort of a little bit of a guess, but that was a 1 Tbsp portion of dough, probably a little bit more. And that resulted in cookies that are a little more than 7 cm in diameter. So, I am probably going to because I need them to be smaller. Now, I have to kind of dial in what is the right quantity of batter. Uh I don't think I'm going to add flour. I don't think I'm going to I really need to thicken it much. I have to just dial in the bake time and the quantity. And make them the right size.
I don't know if I'm going to pipe them or if I have some other portioning method. Like I have scoops, you know? This is a 2 Tbsp measure. This is 1 Tbsp, I think. No. This is 2 Tbsp. I need like an even smaller scoop, really. Um I'm sure you just have a tablespoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh no, no, I'm I'm just trying to think like what is the best way to make sure they're super Maybe it is piping. Maybe it's But I feel like piping sometimes it's not Piping is not the way because it's harder to know if you're dispensing the
same the uniform amount. I'm going to just sort of divide as a way of doing tablespoon size portions and maybe it's just using a tablespoon measure and a spatula. This just had cocoa powder on it. Let's remove these. So, these baked for less for fewer than 8 minutes and I took them out in between. So, 8 minutes might be kind of the right time, but of course I might have to make adjustments based on like the quantity of the quantity that I have on here. So, I'm just going to go through and scrape level tablespoons onto my baking sheet. And that'll be test number two. And I'm not so worried about the shape because I'm going to go with that cutter, that ring cutter at the end. I'm going to bake off a test batch of five.
At the 6-minute mark, I'm going to take them out, form them into a circle while they're still really soft, then throw them back in because I'm worried that if I bake them all the way through without forming the shape, they're going to be a little bit too set to form. So, I'm going to try to dial it in with a kind of circling shaping at the 6-minute mark. That makes sense? All right, recreate Star Crunch cookie, take five. 6 minutes, ring cutter, three more minutes. I think they're a little bit big still. But, let's take a closer look.
It's important to me that they remove This is a nice level of bake, actually. It's like the bottom is shiny, meaning it's like set, and it came off clean from the parchment. They need I want them to be soft, but they have to be able to hold their shape because when I dip them in the caramel and everything, like I just I don't want them to fall apart. So, it's maybe I maybe could have baked it 30 seconds more cuz like it could be maybe a tiny bit sturdier, but it looks really good. So, I'm going for 5.7 cm in diameter, and I'm at 6. This is a little bit more than 6 cm in diameter, like 6.3 cm. So, they're a little bit big still.
So, maybe slightly less batter. Let's cut it and see about that thickness. I'm right where I want to be, 0.7 cm. This was a test for like shape and the level of bake. I think I need ever so slightly less batter. I'm going to keep baking. Same process, 6 minutes, ring cutter, maybe three and a half more minutes, four if I do more per baking sheet, and just start baking them off and getting some ready to go. And I'm going to get a cooling rack. So, what I think I'm going to do is I think I'm going to do eight per sheet, and so I'm going to now switch my method to 6 minutes, ring cutter, and then four.
All right. So, 6 minutes on the timer. Basically, they need to fit inside of this cutter. As long as I didn't make them too tall in the process, but I don't think so. Back in the oven for 4 minutes. All right. You know what I'm going to do? Where I kind of like pushed in the edges, they're a little raised, just so I'm just going to go in and maybe make sure that they're flat on the surface while they're still soft. So, these were in another 4 minutes after I shaped them, and they look great. So, I'm going to let them cool for a little bit, get them off the sheet, repeat that whole process, get another sheet of eight baked off, and I'll have plenty to work with. And then we got to get this rice going
cuz I can't do the caramel without doing the rice at the same time. I just wrapped the rice. It's feeling really dry, like the grains are not sticking together. So, what I think I'm going to do is wrap up the cookies, get that last batch in, get them baked off, ready to go. I'll have the rice drying in that time, and then I'm going to pivot to frying. I think the rice might be ready. So, that's it. Right now, I'm just trying to separate any grains that are sticking together.
Just to I don't want I don't think I want clusters. I mean, I know I don't. I want individual grains. All right. So, I'm going to now my oil's at 400, it's but I think it's even climbing a little over that, and I'm going to fry a tablespoon or two of the rice at a time. Just make sure it hopefully it pops. Let's hope. All right. I mean, it's puffing. I mean, is it puffed rice or what? I think it's working. 5 to 10 seconds, that was it, right? All right, that worked. I'm going to now do it in batches until I've puffed it all.
Fingers crossed. All right, ready? That was a good one. Okay, good. Recreate Star Crunch Caramel, take one. I have my puffed rice. It truly worked better than I thought it would. It puffed pretty evenly. You know what? It is definitely harder and crunchier Oh, that piece not so much. It is not going to be, I think, as light and crisp as the original, but I'm kind of into the idea that I just puffed my own rice. So, we're going to we're going
to go with it. I think it's just harder on your teeth a little bit, but not by much compared to the original. It has a kind of cool toasty flavor, which I like. Okay, so we're going to make a caramel, and I'm basing this off of a recipe that I have for a chewy caramel, like a chewy caramel candy. So, I'm going to start by making a wet caramel. I have a cup of granulated sugar, a little bit of water. This is corn syrup. This is going to go in. It's a 1/4 cup of corn The corn syrup is there to help ensure that chewy texture and prevent crystallization. So, I'm going to make the caramel, add my
dairy, my salt, my vanilla, cook it again to about 240° F to try to give me that soft chewy caramel texture that's going to give me that pull when I like break apart the my version of the Star Crunch. And then I'm going to pour it into here. It's going to be super hot and very liquid, and I'm going to let it cool in this measuring cup until it's the kind of consistency where it's going to like coat the cookie, the rice is going to stick to it, and it's not too thick or too thin. So, that's my plan. All right, so let's get this to a boil. So, I'm turning up the heat. It's about to start taking on color, and I know cuz the bubbles are getting slow and large.
Now, it's kind of like a medium golden, kind of like a blonde honey color. We want to let this get pretty dark. So, I just dialed my heat down a little bit cuz I don't want to overshoot my mark. And now I'm at that kind of nice amber caramel color. I'm going to start by adding 2 Tbsp of butter. And then I'm going to add my cream. The cream is warm, by the way. That's really important when you're making caramel. It's just that if it's cold, it will seize. It'll And then it's not ruined, but then you have to just like remelt it again. I'm going to add salt and a little bit of vanilla. I'm going to scrape down the sides and everything.
Okay, and now we are going to boil this again until I hit 240. It's on very low, so now I'm going to bring it back over a boil. So, I'm at around 220, and we want to bring this back up to 240. 236 237 240. Ah! All right, I'm going to call it. I think we hit it. So, I'm going to pour this in to my measuring cup. Looks good. It's really fluid right now. So, I can't leave it in the saucepan, otherwise I think it's going to overcook. So, I'm getting it in here, and it needs to now rest a little bit until it thickens slightly and is the right consistency to coat the cookies. So,
I'll just kind of give it a stir and like monitor it. And I just want like a thin coat, but a coat that's going to stay put so I can then like pack the rice onto it. So, I'm just going to let this cool for a little bit and stir. Recreate StarCrunch caramel take two. So, after a few minutes the caramel's thickened slightly. I don't really know what the final consistency is supposed to be. I want to do a test. So, I'm going to take one of the larger cookies from my earlier test and try it. So, I'm going to dunk it. I have like a little dipping It's not really a dipping fork, but I use it as a dipping fork. Let's put it into the caramel. Get
it all nice and submerged. I can already tell that I think this is maybe the right consistency. Or maybe a little I don't know. And then as soon as it stops dripping onto the rice. Coat, coat, coat. I mean It's a StarCrunch. Looks so good. All right, I'm going to coat. So, I'm going to make a little bit of like a single layer of rice as a bed for them and I can do a couple at a time. I don't think it's a bad idea to like let the caramel set up a little bit before I dip, but I'm going to let's let's start. I'm going to let that hang out there, let it set up.
I'm kind of pressing the rice down into a single layer. Are you proud of these? I am proud of them. I think they are going to taste so good and I think they're going to look really fun. They're like a little shaggier, like more irregular than the original, but like I think they look so fun. They have more personality. Recreate StarCrunch caramel take three. I think I have enough rice left to make to coat one more cookie and that'll make it an even dozen. Plus my first one which was my test. So, that's really great. It's working out almost better than I thought it would. And the caramel has cooled. Like it's
thicker now than it was when I started, so I'm just taking care not to get too thick a layer. I am going to chill these cuz I need the caramel to set. I'm hoping for a consistency that's firm enough that like you can hold on to it and it doesn't like the rice isn't sliding around. But soft enough that I get that those little threads when I pull it apart or break it in half. And while that is chilling, I want to turn to the chocolate coating cuz I'm not totally sure what I want that to be. Recreate Star Crunch chocolate take one. So I did a little clean up. The star Right now I'm going to call them Star Crunch. When writing a recipe it's always a question of like when do you at what point in the recipe can you call
the thing that it's going to be? You know what I mean? It's like I think they're Star Crunch, they just don't have their coating. Um I was doing some clean up and trying to think about the coating cuz really what I need is cocoa butter. It's not tempered chocolate, it's something like super fluid like there's oil added to it or a fat added to it to make the super thin coating that doesn't then melt in your hands. So you need a fat that's solid at room temp and really the best thing would be cocoa butter, but I don't have any. So I started thinking about like what do I have that is solid at room temp?
I have coconut oil which is kind of solid at room temp, semi-solid. And then I looked around and I was like, "Oh, I have culinary grade beeswax from the time I made canele." And like I do think it's going to work. If I add it. I just don't want it to make the texture super waxy and I don't want it to affect the flavor. But I'm going to try it. So this is 8 g about a tablespoon of beeswax. I have a double boiler. I have some 60% chocolate. I'm going to start to melt my beeswax and my coconut oil together. I'm going to add my beeswax. Ooh, it's immediately starting to melt. And I'm going to add maybe 2 tsp of coconut oil. Get that melting. And then, once this is all melted together and
fluid, I'm going to add my chocolate. These are 4-oz bars. I'm going to break them up and add them. And I'm just going to stir all this together until it's melted. And hopefully, it's gets super fluid. I'm going to add my salt, too. This is melting. Let's take a look at the sample, the tester that I did. And I want to pull it apart and see how it does. All right. So, they feel really nice and solid. This is a good opportunity, actually, to like kind of break off any excess pieces of rice that were maybe like doubling up and making the coating a little thick.
Just kind of shaking off any little extra pieces. All right. So, I'm going to break it apart. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. Is that not like the perfect caramel pull? Looks so good. I nailed it. Already. First of all, this is so good. Taste this. So good. It tastes like caramel popcorn. That's why it tastes so good. I'm going to put some parchment down cuz this is where they'll land if I have a flat surface to finish setting. I'm going to save this rice because this could be a good topping for savory dishes. Or sweet dishes.
Mhm. Gosh. I'm I'm now glad that I made my own puffed rice cuz it really adds such a cool layer of flavor. Having it be really toasty. I would not get that if I just used like rice cereal. I think this is fluid enough. So, as far as like coating, what I'm going for is kind of like a layer that's as thin as possible. And let's just see what happens. You can already tell this is too thick. It's almost like I need to paint it on or something. I don't even need a fork. I can just hold it. Uh you know what, it's not bad. I think it could be thinner. But the problem partly that I didn't think I didn't account for is that like
it's a little cold. And so it's going to make that set. I'm going to turn the heat up a little bit. Try to make it a little bit more fluid. The painting technique is making it so that I can use like every last drop of the chocolate mixture. They're going to go back into the fridge so that chocolate sets. It should set pretty quickly, maybe 10 minutes. And then we'll come back. And I'll clean up. Oh, you know what? Away from the light, like in different light, it looks better than I thought it did.
Like it looks thinner. Now I feel even better, you guys. Recreate Star Crunch taste, take one. Look at how shiny they look. It's set, but like my I leave a little fingerprint in it. So, like could they be colder? Yes. Are we going to keep going? Yes. But they peel here from the bottom. And look, it has like my little flat spots. I like how mine are shiny. It's more appealing. And the color's obviously darker and richer. So, side-by-side, mine is still really could set a little bit longer. The rice grains aren't laying flat, and they're not quite as plump or like wide as their rice grains. So, it's like you see a lot more of the puffed rice texture in there is cuz like
the coating's a little thinner, and it's just like flatter overall. But size-wise, they're really close. Mine are maybe a little bit maybe slightly smaller in diameter. Yeah, like mine's maybe a little over six, and theirs is 6.5 cm, but like so close in terms of height, it's pretty much spot-on. Ooh, it looks so good. I love how you see the rice inside. I think if I had set longer I might get more definition between the different layers like the caramel and the rice and the chocolate. All right, let's see if I get that caramel pull
when I break it open. Oh, yeah. Okay, I'm so happy. That's kind of that's really what I wanted. It just looks delicious. Wow. Mhm. There's a lot going on. Let me wash my hands. The rice doesn't quite have that like dissolving texture. It's like a little bit more toothsome. But it's still really crunchy. Well, it just got like a good amount of salt. The chocolate is more prominent than I thought it would be and it does kind of marry really well with the caramel and then the nuttiness of the rice and then it kind of gives way to the cookie where you got like a
little bit of molasses. This is like I don't know. This would be something that you would find in like I feel like a fancy chocolate shop. It's like a I don't know. It's just like a lot going on. And it's really good. It's truly delicious. It's hard to even compare cuz the flavor is so different but it gives you that satisfying texture from the original. This one is really fun. I feel like mentally it's really nice to have the cookie base kind of already developed and then just make some tweaks. The rice was a fun experiment. I have no reason ever to do it again but like I'm glad I know how to do it. The time has come. I can confidently say that the next one will be Kinder Bueno part two so we really
hope you tune in. This was a fun one cuz like I had never ever really had it but it's actually so good. So if you have more ideas, leave it in the comments below. As always, thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe.
