Archive for: rice krispy treats
I made a lot of Rice Krispy Treats as a kid. They were quick, easy and always satisfied my sweet tooth. I still make them once in a while these days, but I see a lot more potential in that basic cereal+marshmallow+butter recipe than I did when I was a kid. In other words, I now like to make my cereal treats a lot more exciting – and these Chocolate, Almond and Sea Salt Rice Krispy Treats are the perfect illustration of that.
These krispy treats are essentially easy to make chocolate candy bars that you can put together in less than 10 minutes at home. They start off with a basic Rice Krispy treat recipe, to which I added melted chocolate, toasted almonds and sea salt. The chocolate is easy to incorporate into the marshamallow mixture and gives the bars a rich chocolate flavor. The toasted almonds add some crunch – in addition to the crispiness of the cereal – and sea salt gives the bars the perfect balance of sweet and savory. They’re simple, addictive and well worth making, even if you thought that you outgrew Rice Krispy treatsa few years back.
I used semisweet chocolate chips to make these bars, but you can easily use any kind of chocolate you like. The chocolate should be melted along with the butter before the marshmallows are added to ensure that it melts completely. The recipe makes a fairly big batch, so you can easily serve a crowd or just enjoy the bars slowly on your own time. They keep very well when stored in an airtight container and will keep for over a week.
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Fall puts me in the mood for pumpkin desserts and an extra bag of Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows in my kitchen put me in the mood to make some pumpkin spice cereal bars. Homemade rice krispy treats were always a favorite of mine growing up, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to put some new flavor spins on them, such as Black and White Rice Krispy Treats and Peanut Butter Cup Rice Krispy Bars. This time around, I opted to turn that bag of fall spice marshmallows into a batch of Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispie Treats.
To create these bars, I made a graham cracker crust and then put a batch of Rice Krispy treats made with the Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows on top. I like pumpkin pies with a crisp graham cracker crust, so adding that element to this cereal treat version was a logical step. The graham crackers added a whole new layer of flavor (literally!) and also captured the full flavor of a slice of pumpkin pie. The crust needs to be completely cool before you add the cereal treat mixture to allow the marshmallow to stick to it. To avoid breaking up the crust as you add the cereal layer, try to distribute the warm cereal treat mixture evenly and press it into place, rather than trying to spread it over the crust.
Adding the graham cracker crust is what gives these an actual pumpkin pie flavor, as opposed to just a spicy one.
In addition to the batch of these that I made using the Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows, I also made a batch using regular spices. The spice-only version does not require any special edition marshmallows (you’ll still need regular marshmallows) and uses cinnamon, ginger and cloves to add a spicy flavor. It doesn’t have quite the same color as the store bought spice marshmallow bars do, but it has a great flavor and still turns regular cereal bars into a fall treat. These bars keep very well for several days when stored in an airtight container.
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I have a hard time resisting Rice Krispies Treats. I don’t mean the prepackaged kind that taste rather flat – I mean the simple, homemade kind that are made simply with butter, puffed rice cereal and marshmallows. There is something about those crispy, buttery bars that is almost irresistible – especially when they’re freshly made and still slightly warm – and I can see the appeal of trying to translate it into other dishes. That is exactly what they tried to do at Alice’s Tea Cup when they came up with these Rice Krispies Treats Scones. The scones include mini marshmallows and puffed rice cereal for a cereal treat-like flavor.
The scone dough is a fairly simple recipe and it makes a very tender, fluffy buttermilk scone. The addition of the marshmallows and rice cereal is what transforms these scones. When they’re in the oven, the marshmallows bake up and almost seem to melt into the scones, leaving you with delicious pockets of sweet, toasted marshmallow flavor. The puffed rice cereal bits lend a little bit of crunch and a light cereal flavor, although you don’t get that buttery chewiness that you find in the original cereal treats.
I usually knead my scone dough lightly before cutting the scones out to give them a slightly flaky texture. This dough is not kneaded, so the resulting scones are very tender. The dough is quite sticky (and can be made both in the food processor and by hand) so be sure to flour your work surface before shaping and cutting the dough to prevent it from sticking. The scones are good when they’re at room temperature, but are really best when they are still a bit warm from the oven and you get the butter, marshmallow and cereal flavors that you get in a freshly made batch of cereal treats.
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In 1971, General Mills released two Halloween cereals: Count Chocula and Franken Berry. The former was a chocolate cereal and the later was strawberry flavored. These two cereals are still popular today and have an almost cult following as far as cereals go, largely because you can almost only find them around Halloween (I hear some stores stock them year round) and need to wait around the rest of the year if you’re a fan! As a kid, I would munch on these cereals dry as a snack, enjoying the sweet cereal pieces and marshmallow bits that were mixed in. When I saw a display featuring these cereals, I decided to relive a bit of the past – and get in the Halloween spirit – by picking up a box of Franken Berry.
The cereal is just as I remembered. It is vivid red with bat and ghost marshmallows throughout. It’s sweet, but not over the top, and has a good, if artificial, strawberry flavor. I almost poured a bowl for breakfast, but decided that a brightly colored cereal bar would be a more fun use for it.
These are basically Rice Krispy Treats made with Franken Berries. They’re strawberry flavored and have a great red color to them. And while I can’t say that I’d eat them every day, they’re fun to make, tasty and are a big hit with kids (especially the ones around here!).
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One of the easiest sweet treats to make is a rice krispy treat. The basic recipe has only three ingredients – marshmallows, rice krispies (or other puffed rice cereal) and butter – and takes only a couple of minutes to mix together. As a marshmallow fan, I like them plain, but as a fan of easy to make treats, I appreciate how versatile these bars are. You can make them chocolate-flavored or dip them in chocolate, you can use other types of cereal in place of the plain rice cereal, and you can even use the bars as a base for a no-bake candy bar, as I did with this batch.
These rice krispies are topped with a layer of peanut butter and a layer of chocolate, giving them a rich peanut butter cup flavor that is a great contrast for the sweet, crunchy base. The peanut butter (I used a natural pb, but a national brand will work well here, too) layer is very slightly crumbly, much more similar to the interior of a peanut butter cup than to a layer of unadulterated peanut butter. The topping is a chocolate ganache, made with semisweet chocolate and butter.
The only time consuming piece of this snack is that you need to let the layers set up one by one. Even so, you can probably get it done start to finish in an hour – and the hands-on time is probably about 5-10 minutes. They’re a great treat to make with kids and are probably just as likely to be a hit with (adult) coworkers if there are any leftover to be taken into the office.
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