March Madness! A Day of Basketball Treats.

I am not really a sports person, but this year I have actually been following the March Madness tournament a little bit. The team I was rooting for made it to the Sweet 16, but lost to Florida. I am a true blue BYU Cougars fan. I was born into it. My parents went there for college and BYU football and basketball games are a big occasion. My grandpa has a room in his house devoted to BYU ball games. It has a big screen t.v. and a mini fridge and Blue and White decorations all over. It is called the Cougar Den and this year was exiting for BYU because they had a secret weapon called Jimmer Fredette, the NCAA player of the year. They  all played really well against Gonzaga, but didn’t have the best game against Florida. For the Florida game we watched the game with my in-laws. They rented a projector and we watched the game on the whole wall. It was quite a fun party. I was feeling quite a bit of team spirit and I decided to make some goodies. I made a couple of different things and some of them are blue and white, but could easily be made in what ever colors you want. Customize according to who you are rooting for!

RICE KRISPIE TREAT BASKETBALLS:

Ingredients:

• 3 TBSP. butter
• 1 package (10 oz.) regular marshmallows or 4 C. mini marshmallows.
• 6 cups rice cereal.
• orange food coloring (or a little bit of yellow and a little bit of red)
• 1/2 C. dark chocolate chips

Directions:

Melt the butter in a large pot over low heat. Add the marshmallows and stir until a almost all the way melted. Quickly add the orange food coloring and continue to stir until completely melted. Turn off the heat and add the cereal and stir in completely. Let cool for a few minutes and then mold into balls. Set in muffin tins and let them cool. Melt the chocolate chips and put them into a ziplock baggie and cut off a small tip of the corner. Squeeze the chocolate on the basketballs to make the lines of the basketballs. Let the chocolate harden and then serve!

TEAM PRIDE JELLO (from the Food Librarian)

Ingredients:

• 4 (3 oz) boxes of Jello (feel free to pick more than one color to make your team’s colors, but just make sure you have 4 boxes in all)
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 (1/4 oz.) packets of unflavored gelatin
• water

Directions:

1. For each flavor, dissolve on box of jello in one cup of boiling water. Pour each color into a separate container (uncovered) and chill until firm (overnight is best, but I hurried the process along by using the freezer).

2. After they are chilled and the jello is set, but them into cubes. Put all the cubes into a 9 x 13 glass dish. In a separate bowl, sprinkle 2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin into 1/2 C. cold water. After the gelatin starts to dissolve add 1 1/2 C. boiling water and stir until dissolved. Add the condensed milk and stir. Once it is cooled down (about room temp), pour it over the jello blocks. Chill over night or until it has congealed completely.

Note: If your team has a color like black or brown or a color that isn’t one of the jello flavors, take some of the condensed mixture and add some food coloring. Cut them up in cubes and combine with the other jello cubes. Just make sure there is enough white to keep the jello cubes floating.

TEAM PRIDE COOKIES

Make your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough recipe and instead of folding in the chocolate chips, fold in mini m&m’s of your color choice. I bought some mini M&M’s in the bulk section of Winco and I picked out all of the blue ones. I was in a hurry, so I made cake mix cookies (not as good a cookies from scratch, but still good).

SOME OTHER IDEAS (that I would have loved to have made, but ran out of time):

• Truffles coated in white chocolate colored orange to look like basketballs
• Sugar cookies decorated like basket balls
• Cup cakes in the team colors
• Cinnamon rolls with colored icing

Who do you think will win? Comment below!