Apple Rice Crispy Treats

Rice crispy treats are my favorite and thanks to my No-Fail, Best Rice Crispy Treats Ever Recipe, I can make them all the time and they are chewy and delicious, the way they are supposed to be. Now that I have the recipe down pat, I was looking for ways to make them different or better (if that is even possible... who doesn't love just a gigantic, gooey Crispy Treat?!). So I was looking around for a quick snack to make for one of my girls' "Special Days" at preschool and I found a sweet little Pin.

THE PIN: These caught my eye right away because they were so stinkin' cute. They looked kind of tricky though. The piped leaf? I took a cake decorating class with my sister once and we failed miserably... I think we probably flunked out of the class. Not my thing. I was looking for something "quick and easy", and these looked like anything but... unfortunately my daughter saw me looking at them before I could click away and begged me to make them. The power of persuasion! They couldn't be that hard... right?

Note: The recipe I actually used was a little different from the one on the original post. As I said before, I wanted to use my tried-and-true recipe, so I altered it a little.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

1 stick unsalted butter (make sure it's real butter!)
1 10-ounce bag marshmallows (use the small ones!)
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1 small pkg. Jell-o powder, cherry or strawberry flavor

25 small Tootsie Roll Candies

Royal Icing, Tinted green (I just used store bought white frosting, colored it green and piped it out of the corner of a Ziploc baggie... much easier!)
Baking spray
Wax Paper
Red Food Coloring, optional

If you've read my post about the Best Rice Crispy Treats Ever, the first part is very similar but there are some different steps...

Okay, so measure out the Rice Krispies, cut the marshmallows and Jell-o packages, and line a cookie sheet with wax paper first (trust me... do this first!) You might want to spray the wax paper with cooking spray, but that's your choice! Melt the butter until it's brown and smells nutty. It melts, then bubbles and foams a lot, and then calms down and starts to turn brown. If you pull it around the bottom with a spatula, you'll see it start to turn brown. Remove it from the burner and toss in the mellows and stir like you mean it until it's smooth. This is where it's different than the original recipe I use. After you get the mellows melted, dump in the Jell-o powder and stir until it's combined. Red Rice Krispy treats... cool!

So then you'll dump in the Krispies and stir to combine. Once you have it all mixed in well, you're going to start shaping them into balls. You have to do it fairly quickly because it will start to harden a little. Don't worry too much - you'll get it done. The other thing to know is that the mixture will stick to your hands big time. I just sprayed my hands with cooking spray (make sure you do this over the sink. Trust me... otherwise you will have an oily skating rink on your kitchen floor). As you shape them, once they're on the wax paper, take a tootsie roll and stick it into each one, like a little stem. It's way easier if you do this while they're still a little warm. Once they're all done, then you can let them harden a little.

This is the first thing I got...

But it looked like something was missing. Oh yea... the part I was going to stink at doing. I thought of using the "mint leaves" that were mentioned, but since I live in a small town that is 30 minutes away from the nearest Wal-Mart and 2 1/2 hours away from a shopping mall, I didn't think the local grocery stores would have them. So I improvised. I used white canned frosting, colored it green, and put it in a Ziploc bag to pipe one the leaves. They looked good enough!

COST: $ pretty inexpensive. You could pick up all the ingredients for around $10-$12. A lot of them you'll probably already have in your cupboard.

DO-ABILITY: Making the Krispy treats is super easy, so throwing in a little Jell-o is easy enough. The hardest part was the mixture sticking to my hands while I was shaping them into apples. Using the spray on my hands made it a lot easier. As long as you can pipe the leaves on (and that was also pretty easy) you can do it! My kids didn't help with this one, since I made them at 10:00 the night before (like all moms who plan way ahead for things do...), but they easily could have. My husband helped put the tootsie rolls in - if he can do that, your kids could definitely manage! :)

THE SKINNY: I thought the cherry flavor would be weird on these, but it was actually really good. We couldn't stop picking the bits out of the bottom of the pot we used! Observe...

My husband stopped just short of licking the pot clean...

THE GOOD: They are so, SO good. They are very easy to make and the kids loved them! The tootsie roll unwrapping and sticking into the apples is a perfect job for kids to help out with, so the recipe is definitely kid-friendly. If you have a good Rice Crispy Treat recipe, these are a quick option for those morning when your little sweetie informs you that it is your turn to bring snacks (it took be about 30 minutes to make these). Plus, the ingredients are pretty cheap, so you're not going to spend next month's paycheck on them.

THE BAD: The mixture sticks to your hands really badly (I'm guessing the added sugar from the Jell-o makes it worse than the regular rice crispy treat mixture. Just make sure you spray the heck out of your hands with cooking spray (over the trash can!)

PIN OR BUST?: Definitely a good Pin to keep on hand for later. There are so many varieties you could do with this (green apples?) to make different goodies. Orange might be interesting too... or strawberry...

THE LAST WORD: I think I definitely want to try to make at least regular rice crispy treats with other flavorings to see how different ones might taste. Now that I know this is an option, my possibilities are endless! I can definitely imagine making little Rice Crispy Treat oranges (because how hard would that be?!). Go have fun with this one!

Happy Pinning!