Hi Valentine!

I absolutely love making treats to share with my neighbors and friends, and Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to give them a homemade sweet treat.

This recipe is fun to make and produces a large quantity of this crunchy, nutty, salty and sweet treat. Make it a few days ahead of Cupid’s special day and store it in an air-tight container until you're ready to use it. This will keep well at room temperature for about two weeks. When the time comes to prepare your individual treats, divide the mix into gift bags and deliver them to the doors of those grateful recipients.

As you will see in the recipe pictures, I even found some Valentine motif paper cups to hold the mixture in, before placing it in a clear gift bag. This helped me portion out the sweet treat mixture, while also adding a little design. I also created my own handmade gift tags to tie on each bag with a special hand written Valentine message.

As always, have fun with this, and have a happy Valentine’s Day!

So Sweet Snack Mix

Yield:

• 30 cups

Prep Time:

• 20 minutes

Cook Time:

• 1 hour

Total Time:

• 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 box Rice Chex (12 ounces)

• 1 box Corn Chex (12 ounces)

• 1 bag mini pretzel twists (15 ounces)

• 3 cups pecan halves (or other nuts of your choice)

• 2 cups brown sugar

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

• 1 cup light corn syrup

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

Spray a large roasting pan with cooking spray. Since none of my pans are large enough to accommodate the volume of this recipe, I use a disposable foil pan.

Empty the contents of the cereal boxes and bag of mini pretzel twists into the pan. Add the nuts and stir gently to combine. Set aside.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar and light corn syrup just until the brown sugar dissolves. Stir the mixture constantly.

Your kitchen will smell heavenly!

Once the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat. Mixture will be very hot, so take care when pouring it over the cereal mixture.

Stir the sugar mixture into the cereal mixture, making sure all the mixture is coated.

Place the pan in the oven at 250 for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, cover baking sheets or a large counter area with waxed paper.

After the 1 hour baking time, remove the mixture from the oven and spread on the wax paper to cool for about 1 hour.

After the mixture has completely cooled. Transfer into containers or plastic storage bags.

This is lip-smacking good. Share some with yourself before giving it all away.

Hand Made Gift Tag Project

Time to get crafty! If you’re like me, a hand made gift goes a long way to make something really special. If you happen to own or have access to a Cuttlebug, here’s an easy project to quickly enhance your gifting skills. I used different sized dies from the Spellbinder’s Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Rectangles collection to cut out shapes from some scrapbooking paper I had stored in my craft room. I used double-sided tape to affix the smaller rectangle onto the larger one to create the gift tag. Then I punched a whole in the tag and pulled a ribbon through to tie the tag onto my gift bags. This is just one easy way to let your friends and loved ones know how special they are to you on the Valentine’s Day!

Tips and Tricks:

I have added ground cinnamon to the sugar mixture, but you could add Pumpkin Pie Spice for a fun and different flavor, especially during the holidays.

Also, if you wanted to turn up the heat a bit, try adding a little cayenne pepper to the sugar mixture. Please note, add the cayenne pepper when the mixture is removed from the heat so your eyes won’t burn.

I added 2 cups of pecan halves and one cup of whole almonds. You can choose any nuts you like, but just make sure you’re using whole or larger nuts - not pieces, and the amount totals 3 cups. Pistachios and cashews are great in this recipe if you like those, too. I have also used cocoa dusted almonds, as well.

This snack travels well, and would be good to take along on a road trip.

Tools:

I’ve included links to some tools and equipment you might find useful for making this recipe.