Chocolate Crackles

This is my second attempt at writing this post. The first one just sucked. I'm not sure why. Something to do with pre-breakfast morning grouchiness. So to avoid that, I'm writing this now at half past midnight.

Chocolate crackles are the quintessential Australian confection. You will almost surely find these at an Aussie kid's birthday party. They're sort of restricted to kids though (no idea why). The last time I had one of these must have been at least ten years ago. Being an Asian migrant, my mother had no idea about these ugly looking chocolate thingys, so I only got to eat them at other peoples birthday parties. Which is fine, because if it were any other way, I'd probably weigh twice as much as I do now.

I made these ones last week for a friend from Canada to try. I've only made these myself once before in my life. That was probably about fourteen years ago. I made these with a teacher at school with two bowls and a microwave (yes, I remember). So yes, a six year old can make these (with supervision of course) and I promise you they are very yummy.

Chocolate Crackles


4 cups rice bubbles (or any other rice puff cereal I suppose)
1 1/2 - 2 cups icing sugar, depending on how sweet you want it
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/4 cup cocoa powder
250g copha*

Mix together the rice bubbles, icing sugar, coconut and cocoa in a large bowl. Melt the copha in a heatproof bowl in the microwave (or on the stove if you prefer). This won't take long, but probably a little longer than butter would take.

When it's all melted, pour it straight into the bowl containing everything else and mix together thoroughly, taking care not to crush all the rice puffs, if possible. If you find that it's all looking a bit gloopy and feels hard to move around, your copha may be starting to set, so just pop into the microwave for 30 seconds or so and it should loosen up.

Spoon into cupcake liners and refrigerate until set. That's all!

*Copha is an Australian brand of vegetable shortening. It is solidified coconut oil and is special in that it is solid at room temperature. For this reason, I'm not sure if you can substitute just any brand of vegetable shortening, as it's pretty important that it sets at room temp. I've heard of using melted chocolate to make chocolate crackles, so that may be the way to go, but the flavour won't be truly authentic.