Deanna's Birthday Sushi

A couple days ago, we celebrated my youngest daughter's 17th birthday.  I'd asked what sort of cake she wanted and she declared she didn't want any cake at all - she's not a fan, and her's was the third birthday within a month and we'd had a wedding in that time frame as well.

So, instead of cake, she requested Candy Sushi, something we'd seen recipes for but hadn't tried.

Two things about this stuff - it is really messy to make.  And it is insanely tasty.  It took over two hours to make and it was all gone in less than a day.

There are a few ways to do this - and in spite of the mess, we will be doing it again, but this was how we did it.

Deanna's Birthday Candy Sushi

Rice Krispie Sushi Rice:
10 cups Rice Krispies
15 oz marshmallow fluff
1/2 c. butter

Sushi filling and wraps:
Fruit Roll Ups
Twizzlers (in rainbow colors if you can find them)
Gummi worms
Fruit Gel candies
Swedish fish
any other brightly colored candies that catch your fancy

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan along with the marshmallow fluff.  When it is fully melted, about 5 minutes, remove from heat and mix in the Rice Krispies.

We approached the preparation of the Sushi Rice Krispy Treat mixture like this, but I'm not totally convinced it was the best way - we patted a rather thin layer of the mixture onto waxed paper, and kept doing this so that we had rectangles of the Rice Krispies stacked up and ready to roll.  Even so, by the time we got to the end of the stack, they were getting pretty hard to work with.  So alternative ideas are welcome!

Next, we set up our work station, taking one of our prepared Rice Krispie rectangles and laying out a line of candy and then rolling it up (jelly roll style), using the waxed paper to help hold it together.  Once it is completely wrapped around the candy, you want to cut off the log and apply some pressure to make sure it is tightly pressed in shape.  We found that each rectangle of Rice Krispies made about three logs.

As soon as the log is pressed together, a fruit roll up is wrapped around the log to take the part of a sheet of nori.  Don't stress to much about color - the ones we used were two tone (blue and red, yellow and...something).  Don't get the fruit by the foot - that would be very slow and messy.  DO get a kid or someone who actually eats the stuff to handle peeling the fruit roll ups off their paper for you, because trying to do that after you just had your hands busy squeeze Rice Krispy Treats logs will not be pretty.  The fruit 'nori' really helps hold it all together...squeeze a bit more and then set it aside for a few minutes to really settle before slicing into sushi rolls.

That's about it, except you do this over and over again for a couple hours and every so often, a roll won't quite work out or you'll try something that really didn't do what you thought it would - like making a roll with the rice on the outside and having the whole thing turn into a sugary pile of badness.  But that's okay, because you get to eat your mistakes and they still taste insanely good.

If - like us - you make a lot of mistakes, about an hour after you're done you'll suddenly find yourself crashing into a massive sugar coma and needing a good nap.  With visions of sugarplums dancing in your head...
Next time I want to experiment with more shapes, come up with something to act as wasabi, and figure out some better way to handle the Rice Krispy Treat mixture.

I also plan to make a more grown up version of dessert sushi here soon, with sweetened *real rice* and fruit... I'm still deciding what I want for the nori for that.