Totoro Party #1- Scotcheroo Recipe

This past weekend, we had a party for Joey's and Kenzi's birthdays (10 and 16). They have always loved Totoro, so that was the theme for this year.

The problem I ran into when forming the Totoro cake was the fact that the top of the cake cannot be bigger than the bottom or it will go all slumpy. When you need to make a cake like that, though, you can to use some other form of support for the bottom part and then stack the rest of the actual cake on top.

I chose to use Scotcheroos and they worked perfectly to help provide structure to the cake. Scotcheroos are something my mom used to make. They're essentially Rice Krispie treats with peanut butter instead of marshmallows. (And I'm pretty sure that the reason for the name is that you're supposed to coat these with melted chocolate and butterscotch chips, but I rarely do because butterscotch chips are gross.)


(For now, I'm just putting up a picture of what traditional Scotcheroos look like; I'll show you the cake later in the week.)

Ingredients
1 cup of light corn syrup
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of peanut butter
6 cups of Rice Krispies

Instructions
-Combine the corn syrup and sugar together in a fairly large pot and heat over medium heat, stirring often.
-When the mixture begins to bubble, take off the heat and stir in the peanut butter until it is well mixed.
-Stir in the Rice Krispies with a folding motion, making sure to scoop all the peanut butter up from the bottom.

Now you can do one of two things. Press the mixture into a well-buttered pan using a buttered spoon or your hands. Or butter up your hands and very carefully begin to mold it into whatever shapes you want. Just be careful 'cause this stuff is pretty hot at first.

It tends to slump when it’s still warm, so you can either keep reforming it, or wait until it’s cooled a bit more. The girls were able to form a lot of the Makkuro Kurosuke (or dustbunnies) themselves.

And since this party involved so many different things, I've decided to do a little series for it (as opposed to one ginormous post).

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Related Posts-
Totoro Party #2- Dustbunnies
Totoro Party #3- Catbus
Totoro Party #4- Totoro Cake
Fine Art from the Recycling Bin