Rice Krispies Treats

It’s been a while since I made Rice Krispies Treats! They’re my husband’s favorite right after Dirty Pudding, so when his birthday rolled around this year I thought about it and realized how long he’s gone without them. And, here we are!

Rice Krispies Treats Ingredients

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Rice Krispies Treats recipe:

• Rice Krispies cereal: I use the brand we’re all aware of, but I’ve also used gluten-free crispy rice cereal and there wasn’t a difference that anyone mentioned or I noticed.
• Marshmallows; mini-marshmallows: You can use all mini-marshmallows if you like, but you’ve gotta use at least one bag of mini-marshmallows. They are key! Bigger marshmallows will affect the process.
• Salted butter: The salted butter really helps bring out the notes of vanilla. Sometimes I’ll add another small pinch of salt, depends on what I decided during taste testing. I didn’t include this in the recipe because I don’t always do it.
• Vanilla extract; vanilla bean paste: You can use solely vanilla extract if you like: I like the wash of vanilla bean caviar the paste adds to the final product. Vanilla adds a warm note, and a depth to the sweetness from the marshmallows.
• Equipment: I used a deep-dish 9×13 glass baking dish to form the treats pictured. If you want your treats to be thinner divide the mixture between a regular 9×13 pan and a brownie or loaf pan. Here’s all the equipment I used in the video for this recipe (except the pot. I’ve listed my Giant Braiser but I used my Bistro Pan):

How to Make Rice Krispies Treats

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Rice Krispies Treats recipe:

• Melt the butter. Over medium-low heat (you can start on low if you don’t want to worry about adjusting the temperature later) in a pot much larger than the one I used in the video, melt an entire stick of butter. Make sure it’s entirely melted before you move on to the next step.
• Melt the first batch of marshmallows. Turn the heat to low (it’s lowest!), then add the entire bag of regularly-sized marshmallows and stir together with the butter until it looks like a pot of greasy marshmallow fluff. No lumps, just smooth streaks of marshmallow and melted butter.
• Add the second bag of marshmallows in batches. Add half of the bag of mini-marshmallows now, and stir together. Let these soften and melt, but it doesn’t need to get as smooth as the first bag of marshmallows. Lumps are fine. Now add the remaining marshmallows and remove the pan from heat. Stir to combine.
• Add the cereal. Now fold in the cereal, gently. It’s going to make a mess if you didn’t choose a large enough pan – but you can transfer to a larger one if needed.
• Form into the pan and let cool completely. Line the pan with parchment paper or grease it lightly with butter or oil. Pour the mixture into the pan, spread it out, and then use your fingers or a silicone spatula to very gently press the mixture together. You’re not trying to push it down into the pan, but further into itself. Like making clay or playdough. Cover tightly and let cool before turning out of the pan onto a cutting board and using a sharp, greased knife to slice it into squares.
• Eat ’em fast. These do not keep more than a day or two, even though you’ll store them in an air-tight container. I’ve managed to get an extra day or so from vacuum sealing them, so if you have one of those feel free. Otherwise, start chewing!!

Don’t Mess ‘Em Up: 

I went over this in my Loaded Rice Krispies Treats so I’m cutting and pasting them here and expanding a bit. These are incredibly simple to make, and just as simple to ruin. To make sure you have firm but soft, gooey but not overly sticky, sweet but not cloyingly so, Rice Krispies Treats keep note of the following things…

• Low heat is important. Ever bit into a Rice Krispie Treat and it was drier than a mug? I promise you it was made by someone who tried to rush through an already quick process and now you’re suffering.
• I start the burner on medium-low for the butter, and before a marshmallow ever hits the pan the heat has been reduced to its lowest. When it’s time to stir in the second batch of marshmallows, we turn off the heat, and before the cereal comes into play we remove the pan off the burner altogether.
• When forming them in the pan, don’t press too hard. You only want to use enough pressure to get them to congeal and not much more. Pressing too hard will pack everything too tightly, and take your Rice Krispies Treats from chewy to tough. And hard. We don’t want that.
• Greasing your fingers makes this easier because you’ll naturally push harder if you’re trying to remove gunk from your fingers and get it to stick. Use the pads of your fingertips and treat it like a delicate dough you’re trying to spread out. A silicone spatula sprayed with cooking spray works great here, too.

Let me know what you think if you try them! Here’s a graphic for Pinterest:

Print