Creamy Candy Crunch

This one must be so good that there were two copies on recipe cards tucked into the book I bought, one hand written and one typed. To do the handwritten one, the person even cannabalized a recipe for sugar cookies so she could use the back of the card to get the recipe down. Sorry Martha, your boring ol' sugar cookies don't rise to the level of Evelyn's Creamy Candy Crunch.

1 lb. almond bark
2 T peanut butter
1/2 c salted spanish peanuts
2 c miniature marshamallows
2 c rice krispies
Mealt bark and peanut butter in top of double boiler. Combine peanuts and cereal in a large bowl. Pour melted mixture over cereal and peanuts. Stir to coat evenly. Add marshmallows and mix. Drop by spoonful on waxed paper. Let stand until cool.

I think I'd like this without the marshmallows. It's very similar to Tingalings which I make during the holidays: semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted, with peanuts and crunchy chow mein noodles instead of the rice krispies.  That recipe originally came out of a Christmas magazine my mother picked up when I was a toddler. It had a shortened illustrated version of A Christmas Carol that my mom read to me prior to embarking on the original.   That grew into a tradition of reading Dickens' full A Christmas Carol the week prior to Christmas, ending it on Christmas Eve.

We made other recipes from that magazine too, hanging onto it for years, until it presumably fell apart because I haven't seen it since I was in grade school. It had little gnome-like elves pictured in the margins, running around doing the cooking, and there was a recipe for a candy whose chief ingredient was a box of frosting mix. You made a dough and rolled little balls with a nut hidden inside and then rolled them in green or red decorating sugar. I snuck so many of these...