<p>OK, the holidays are over and I have a lot of salted, shelled mixed nuts (some colleague of my husband’s gave us a HUGE tub) and milk chocolate chips and disks (D and I had intended to dip more things into chocolate than we did).</p>
<p>Also, I am not much of a cook.</p>
<p>I was thinking I could do some sort of a candy/cookie thing to put in my son’s brown bag lunches or feed his friends - when a group of them are over they will eat up just about anything. Any ideas? I suppose I could just take nuts and pretzels and chocolate and make little balls and it would basically be milk chocolate covered nuts/milk chocolate covered pretzels, but that sounds overly sweet. I’ve got Cheerios… </p>
<p>The chocolate will keep and eventually get used - maybe I need an easy cookie or bar recipe that uses a lot of nuts? They are mostly peanuts and hazelnuts. Or, I have Ritz crackers - maybe put nuts on a Ritz and then put melted chocolate over that? Maybe glue the nuts together with peanut butter first?</p>
<p>I do have a candy thermometer, so I suppose that in theory I could make peanut brittle/nut brittle of some sort? </p>
<p>Google for a recipe for microwave nut brittle. After you have poured out the slab let it cool for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle with chocolate. After it has melted, spread. Let totally cool and break into pieces. You can also sprinkle the warm chocolate with more chopped nuts.</p>
<p>gloworm has the right idea. Add some dried fruit and call the mix gorp. With hazelnuts and milk chocolate I would like dried cherries, cranberries, or maybe apricots (cut them in half with a pair of scissors if you think they are too big.) Almost any kind of dried fruit works, although with milk chocolate I would go for the tarter ones . Aim for a kind of 1:1:1 ratio of salty(nuts), sweet (chocolate) and tart (dried fruit) Toss it all together in a bowl and then put into sandwich bags for adding to lunches, etc. Great to keep in the car as well for a quick snack if you missed breakfast, lunch, etc.</p>
<p>I usually keep a bowl of this kind of a mix (if nothing else salted peanuts, chocolate chips, and raisins on the counter in our pantry. When my sons’ friends come over it always the first thing to disappear.</p>
<p>^^^^Great!! Just dice up the mango if isn’t bite size all ready ( the best way to chop up dried fruit is with scissors). Mangos, raisins, hazelnuts and chocolate? Sounds good to me!</p>
<p>And some Cheerios to cut the sweetness. That sounds delicious. I will definitely have to sample some; I wonder how many Weight Watcher’s points in a handful? :)</p>
<p>I made a few cups of it and offered it to my son for his lunch; no way, he said. So I brought it to work and everyone loved it. So now I have used up one cup of the nuts, anyway… :)</p>