Recipe: Kitchen Sink Super Bowl Bars

Super Bowl season is a time of snacks of all sorts — sweet, salty and delicious! These Kitchen Sink Bars cover all sorts of flavors and whip up in a snap. They're great for cleaning out the pantry, plus you don't even need your oven!

Sure there are more gourmet goods to be had, but it's always nice to have a sweet treat that you know comes together super fast and leaves your oven open for chicken wings and other assorted football-fanatic foods. These bars are held together by melted chocolate and inside lies all sorts of surprises.

These are a great way to clean out your pantry, the end of that box of raisins, the end of some sunflower seeds, bits of cereals, even purchased snacks or candy bars that might be lurking in a dark corner. They're as easy as pouring, melting and mixing. You can dress them up, dress them down, add in healthy items or junk them up for the mega-sweet tooths in attendance. Simply cut all ingredients with your kitchen shears and forgo to the knife— how simple is that? Here's what's in ours:

Kitchen Sink Super Bowl Bars
Yields: 117, 1" squares

23 ounces Chocolate (chips, chunks, bars - just as long as it melts)
12 ounces Mixed Candy Bars
2 cups Mini Marshmallows
1.5 cups Corn Flakes
1 cup Raisins
1 cup Dried Apricot (or other dried fruit)

Cut all ingredients into small pieces using kitchen shears (a knife will work, but shears are so much easier!). Toss in a large bowl to distribute evenly. Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in microwave, until just melted. Stir to finish melting small chunks and pour over candy-cereal-fruit mixture. Stir with a large wooden spoon and press into a 13x9 pan (parchment is your friend). As the chocolate cools, the mixture will turn to one solid bar and then it's ready to be cut into squares. Enjoy!

Though it's tempting to cut larger pieces, this bar is so rich, trust us when we say, cut small! Other additional things that can be fun to mix in are silly things like gummy candies, a sprinkle of sea salt, pretzels, rice cake pieces, or extra cereal for added crunchy bits.

(Image: Sarah Rae Trover)

Comments (9)

I'm going to try this and top with some sea salt once its pressed into the pan. YUM!

Wow, that is fast (and easy.) I like that it's relatively inexpensive to make, and can be rendered vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free depending on the ingredients used. Great idea.

Mmmm this would be even better with pretzels (or potato chips?!) rather than corn flakes!

@ncsuemme Rats. I hadn't thought of that and now I REALLY want to make these. I LOVE chocolate pretzles.

That looks really good!

I'd have to buy candy bars just to make this though and somehow that doesn't seem quite right. You should re-post this around Halloween.

Slow Lorus: It does seem weird to purchase candy bars especially for it, though if you can hold out till post Valentines day, there's sure to be some hanging around the clearance bins! (You can also just substitute something else in the same quantity)

I make something very similar to this, except I mix condensed milk with the chocolate chips as they melt.

http://kelly-whatwereeating.blogspot.com/2008/12/candy-for-christmas.html

That is a great alternative Fnnkybutt, plus it will make your chocolate cover a bit more. The end result will make it a fudge-ish product instead of hard chocolate, but would be tasty either way!

I made a batch this weekend, brought half to a superbowl party and half to my office. Dubbed "chocolate-covered-crack", it's simply amazing. I used pretzels, honey bunches of oats, raisins, dried cherries, marshmallows, milkyway, and a sprinkle of sea salt on top.