It was an old TV commercial that got me thinking about Crispix Mix. In the late eighties when my brother was a baby, my parents taped a Disney Christmas special that included Mickey's Christmas Carol and a bunch of classic Disney cartoons. I was watching the tape and reminiscing about my childhood when I noticed the commercials. They were hilarious! Everyone had goofy hairdos and microwaves were at the forefront of cooking technology. Sometime between then and now, advertisers learned to be ironic, to make commercials that make fun of themselves. The complete lack of irony in these old commercials was kind of cute and refreshing.
    The best was a commercial for Crispix, which centered around a bowl of Crispix mix with confetti falling and the sound of crunching in the background. A woman's voice explained that Crispix mix was made with real Crispix, which made it "extreeemely crunchy!" I had recently seen a recipe for a pretzel based snack mix on David Lebovitz's blog, which he said he adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris, one of his cookbooks. I further adapted the recipe to use Crispix, and by changing the amounts of several ingredients and adding hazelnut syrup. The resulting Crispix mix was salty-sweet with just a touch of heat, and of course, "extreeemely crunchy!"

Ingredients:
1+1/2 cup Crispix cereal
1 cup roasted lightly salted peanuts
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp maple syrup
1 tsp hazelnut syrup
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

    Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Melt the butter in a medium bowl in the microwave. Mix in the syrups, brown sugar, salt, chili powder, and cinnamon. Add the Crispix and peanuts, and stir to coat the cereal and nuts in the sugary mixture. Pour the coated cereal and nuts into a shallow 8x8 baking dish, and bake at 325 degrees for about 20 minutes, taking it out to stir the mix two or three times, until the cereal is glazed with the sugar mix. Remove from the oven and let the mix cool before eating. Store in an airtight container.