When we were little, my sister and I made ornaments as Christmas presents. I made angels and she made Santas. We would wrap them in tissue paper and put them in one of our mother’s many wicker baskets, then hand them out to relatives on Christmas Eve and Day (Eve was with Dad’s family, Day was with Mom’s). Our mother still has many of the ornaments and still puts them on her tree annually. I look at those things and think, wow, I was a crafty kid! For example, my pasta angel: made from rigatoni, with wooden heads glued to the rigatoni and small pasta stars glued onto the wooden head as hair. Pretty intricate for an 11 year old!
We always had fun making our ornaments. Over the years, however, ornament making morphed into cookie making. I made chocolate truffles and my sister made cornflake clusters. Both were received with excitement and devoured usually within 24 hours. No one seemed to miss the ornaments very much. I can’t say I blame them.
My sister’s cornflake clusters were especially good. I’m not sure where our mother found the recipe, but it has held up over the years. Although we don’t make Christmas cookies anymore, we often come with a few batches of cornflake clusters anyway. We aim to please. The traditional recipe calls for butterscotch chips and peanut butter, melted and mixed with cornflakes, but since I’m on a serious Nutella obsessed-kick at the moment, I thought, let’s try it as a butterscotch substitute with Nutella peanut butter. It makes for a more gooey cluster, but is just as deliciously addicting as the original.
Nutella and Peanut Butter Clusters
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 12 clusters 1x
Description
These Nutella Peanut Butter Clusters are quick and easy little cookies made with cereal, nutella, and peanut butter. 10 minutes and you’re done!
Ingredients
- ½ cup peanut butter (the sugary stuff works best)
- ½ cup Nutella
- 2 cups flake cereal of your choice (I like using Kashi 7 Whole Grain Flakes)
- Fluer de sel
Instructions
- Take a medium-sized sauce pan and fill it with a couple inches of water. Put on the stovetop over medium heat. Spoon the peanut butter and Nutella into a bowl that, when placed over the sauce pan, will create a double boiler (or if you have a double boiler, which I obviously don’t, use that!). As the bowl heats, stir the ingredients together until they are warm and melty. Once the peanut butter and Nutella are fully combined, take the bowl off the heat and add the flakes. Gently stir, fully coating the flakes with the peanut butter and Nutella mixture.
- Place tin foil or wax paper over a cookie sheet. Using your hands, take a handful of the mixture out of the bowl and place it on the cookie sheet, creating clusters equal to about ½ cup. Disclaimer: this will be messy! Continue to create clusters. This recipe should make about 12. Once the bowl is empty, be sure to get a few licks in of peanut butter and Nutella mixture before placing it in the sink. Waste not, want not. Sprinkle each cluster with a bit of Fluer de sel. Place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator and cool the clusters for a minimum of 2 hours.
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Category: Snack
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: peanut butter clusters, nutella clusters, clusters
About the author: Sarah is the writer of a new and perfectly cute blog called The Chubbette. If the name alone doesn’t charm you, her simple, delicious recipes certainly will! Her blog focus is “simple, unpretentious food that I love”.