Happy Easter. God bless us the lord has risen, and I have been reunited with Diet Coke after 40 very long days and nights. The best part of road trips to Connecticut is stopping at the Mass Pike rest stop to get a giant McDonald’s Diet Coke to fuel the rest of the drive. After pretending for the past 40 days that soda water + lime was just as satisfying as a DC, I was excited to get my hands on that sweet nectar of the coca cola gods. So you can imagine my reaction when McDonalds tells me they are out of Diet Coke. That’s like them being out of French Fries pretty much. Come on Charlton rest stop, get it together. Instead of causing a scene, I just got my refund and bought my DC from the Mobile Station … just not the same.

But the drive was all worth it of course, if for nothing else, but to get this picture taken:

At first he pretended that he didn’t want to get this picture taken, but I think we all know it was the highlight of the day. I told him he was quickly becoming an internet sensation. I didn’t get time to do all the Easter baking I had hoped for because work has been kicking my butt the past few weeks, but I did make sure to bake up some Cadbury mini egg blondies at 10pm Friday night when I got home because they were a request from Grandpa – and if he’s going to keep being my Southie parking spot good luck charm, I owed it to him to pay it forward with some baked goods.

So I had to get on the road early this morning because the Mass Pike is the worst place to be driving on Easter Sunday afternoon, which meant my mom did a nice Easter dinner yesterday afternoon with all of us. I have a 6am flight to Chicago for work tomorrow morning so I needed to whip something up today that required minimal effort because I am one tired lady. I had bought Rice Krispies last week when making homemade protein bars (healthy) and figured I would make something with that giant box of cereal this week (opposite of healthy).

One of my all-time favorite blogs is Love & Olive Oil, and the lady behind the blog wrote this book called The Cookie Dough Lover’s cookbook, which is full of eggless edible cookie dough recipes that you must try. So one of them my brother said he did once (obviously I gave him that book) was the cookie dough stuffed rice krispie treats. I had obviously bought the biggest bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs for the blondies, so I needed to get rid of the remaining eggs as soon as possible because I could easily eat my way through a significant quantity of them no problem. So I decided to make my own twist on the cookie dough crispy treats with my own Easter spin.

I did not want to be left alone in the house today with a 13×9 pan of Rice Krispie treats, so I modified the recipe as shown below to be made in an 8×8 dish instead.

Ingredients:

Cookie Dough

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup milk or cream
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup Cadbury Mini Eggs, chopped

Crispy Treats

• 3 1/2 cups crisp rice cereal
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 6 ounces marshmallows (3.5 cups of mini marshmallows)
• Sprinkles (optional)

Step 1: Cream butter and sugars on a high speed. Add in vanilla extract and milk and blend until well incorporated, scraping the bowl before adding in the dry ingredients.

Step 2: Add in the flour and salt and mix until blended. Add in the mini chocolate chips and mix until evenly distributed. If you don’t have mini chips, that’s fine, but I do recommend chopping up regular-size chips until they are smaller.

Step 3: This step is optional but encouraged if you have mini eggs around. Chop up about 3/4 cup of the Cadbury mini eggs and add to the cookie dough, and mix just until incorporated. This dough is eggless so total safe for hefty quantities of taste testing.

Step 4: Melt the marshmallows and butter in the microwave, taking out regularly to stir, Add in the rice crispy cereal and stir with a wooden spoon.

Step 5: Generously grease the bottom of an 8×8 glass baking dish. Press half of the marshmallow crispy goodness into the bottom of the dish. Take the cookie dough and spread that evenly on top. Take the remaining rice crispy mixture and cover the dough completely. Top with your sprinkles of choice if you have some on hand.

Step 6: Refrigerate for at least a half hour before serving, because this will help make it a lot easier to cut them. They can be stored up to 3 days, but I doubt they will last that long!

 

Spring manicure courtesy of Essie’s new color Romper Room.

I am on a 6am flight out tomorrow morning, so hopefully Colleen or Francesca will be able to distribute these to some sweet tooths in my absence. The Easter Bunny gave me some solid candy options this year, which I am sure will make their way into a cookie pretty soon. Speaking of the Easter Bunny, Skip uploaded all of our home videos to this iMemories website where I can watch them anytime I want. Which I do from time to time, because if you think 29-year-old Becca is hilarious, you should have seen me in 1989 in some footy pajamas. I’ve been the funny guy of the family ever since I could talk. So anyways, I was watching Easter 1989 a few weeks ago. And little 4-year old Rebecca runs into the family room while Skip is filming the memory, and I yell “THE EASTER BUNNY CAME!” and narrator Skip says “How do you know Rebecca?” and I say ” BECAUSE HE DRANK THE DIET COKE!” Now. I think this is where my addiction to Diet Coke set in at an early age. Because while The Easter Bunny and Santa were pounding milk at all the other houses in southern Connecticut, they were getting their ice cold Caffeine Free Diet Coke from the Shaw household.

I watched the Wolf of Wall Street tonight. Ugh. I prefer Leo standing at the front of a boat with Kate screaming I’m King of the World with a little poignant Celine Dion poetry playing quietly in the background, as opposed to the vulgar site of Leo that I endured for 3 hours tonight. Ugh. Speaking of GREAT movies though, I was still feeling the effects of a brutal work week, combined with an East dinner food coma yesterday, so I snuggled up on my bed at home and watched 3 total classic movies, starting with my favorite: Notting Hill, then the world’s most underrated movie ever KINDERGARTEN COP, and then I fell asleep somewhere early on in Goodwill Hunting. I can quote a really good portion of Kindergarten Cop, to the point where I think I’m really funny and most people around me have no idea what I’m quoting. Like when I sit at my desk (almost all the time) with my hands in my head trying to rub the headache out, when someone asks me if I have a headache, I always want to yell “it’s not a tumor!” but 8 times out of 10, I refrain so that people don’t think I am a total nut.

Last week in between prepping for this week’s big testing week at work, I managed to fit in some time with a few solid friends – Chessie, Lauren, Jackie and then wrapping the week up with Ania. Ania and I went to both high school and Boston College together, so after that work week (did I mention last week sucked big time?) it was just what I needed Friday night – some quality time with a good friend, and a dinner of martinis and french fries. She can also quote a significant portion of Kindergarten Cop with me, which explains why we are still friends after all these years.

Alright, well that’s all I have for tonight. My alarm is set for 3:45 am so I am slightly regretting waiting until the last minute to write this, but it wouldn’t be a Salted Cookie post if it was not written when I was a little punchy and overtired on a Sunday night right?

Wishing everyone in Boston a very happy and safe Marathon Monday tomorrow.