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!

Pin-able Snack Mixes - Summer Edition

Our family loves snack mixes. You can change them to fit almost any season or time of year (throw in some candy corn, Valentine's hearts or peppermint candy). Our kids have their "show and share" and "special days" at daycare and at school and snack mixes are so easy to throw together and toss in a gallon-size Ziploc. I didn't want to do 87 different posts on all the kinds of snack mixes we enjoy, so I thought I'd just do a one post on some of our faves. Hunker down... this is a long one. Feel free to come back later! :)

THE PIN: Well... there are several so my normal format won't work here. I'll just list my favorites and approximate cost. For do-ability, you can consider them all extremely easy, because basically you just dump everything into a bowl. How hard is that? If there are any special steps I'll make sure to note them. :) As far as Pinning these bad boys? Consider them all good Pins (otherwise they wouldn't be worthy of this post!) A couple of things to keep in mind here... some of my favorite mixes have ingredients that are "seasonal", so as I am writing this post in the middle of the summer, some of them just might not make the list... this time. I tried to pick "summery" mixes. That doesn't make them not worthy (cue Wayne's World... "We're not worthy... we're not worthy!"). Stay tuned for more Snack Mix Compilations. We love snack mixes that much! Here goes...

"Bear Lake Trail Mix"
Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. Swedish fish
1 (18.75 oz.) bag traditional Chex mix
2 1/2 c. chocolate chip teddy grahams (*we used honey)
1 1/2 c. goldfish crackers (*we used the cheddar ones)
1 c. licorice bits (you can leave this out if you wish - good both ways!)
1 1/2 c. pretzel M&Ms (make sure you use the pretzel ones - it matters!)
2 1/2 c. Bugles

We made this for one of the kids' special days and it made such a ginormous batch that we had about half left over for ourselves. Let me just tell you, I'm so glad that it made way too much for 18 daycare kids to finish. We had no trouble polishing this off. One night as we were watching TV, I had a craving for some sort of salty/sweet combo and I remembered this sitting on top of our fridge. I only took a small bowl, but I told the hubby I probably could have eaten the whole gallon-size baggie worth. It is that good. This would be perfect for summer camping, road trips, or (as we use it) just to keep in the house for the kids (or myself... semantics). Way better than eating plain old Goldfish!
Cost: $$ If you buy all the ingredients it will put you back about $15, but it makes two gallon size baggies. Save one for your next road trip and it will STILL last you a few weeks.

"Thin Mint Puppy Chow"

I had never had "Puppy Chow" until college when my friend, Brandi, (or was it Michelle?...) introduced me to it. So, thanks to Brandi... or Michelle. I now know that "Puppy Chow" is a delicious treat for humans... not puppies. So... *Note: (It has to be said...) this is NOT for dogs... this "Puppy Chow" mix is for humans. Don't feed it to your dog! Unless you really dislike him...

This one takes a little bit of special preparation, in true Puppy Chow form. There is some melting and mixing to take into account, but nothing a beginner cook can't handle... as long as you can use a microwave and shake stuff, you're good. Also, it is made in two batches, so I separated out the ingredients below.

Ingredients:
Chocolate Part5 c. Rice Chex
1 1/2 c. semisweet or milk chocolate chips
12 Thin Mint cookies, finely crushed
1/4 c. powdered sugar

Put the Rice Chex into a big bowl (use the biggest bowl you have). Melt the chocolate chips for about 90 seconds in the micro, stopping halfway to stir (otherwise the chocolate could burn). While the chocolate is melting, put the thin mints into a baggie and use a rolling pin to crush them (perfect for kids to help with!) Once the chocolate is melted, pour it over the Chex and mix genlty until all of them are coated. Pour the crushed up Thin Mints and powdered sugar into a gallon size baggie and add the chocolate-coated cereal. Close the bag and shake the dickens out of it (kids are GREAT at this!) Lay the cereal out on wax paper to let it cool awhile.

Green Part
5 c. Rice Chex
1 1/2 c. white chocolate melts or white chocolate chips, you can use green melts if you want **
Green GEL food coloring (optional, but make sure it's gel) **
1/4 c. powdered sugar
Repeat all of the above minus the thin mints part (you don't use them for this batch). The amounts are all the same, except you use white choc chips or white choc melts instead of chocolate chips and you dye them green, if desired (but if you dye the white chocolate, make sure to read my side note below **).

** Heads up: When I melted the white choc chips, they were nice and smooth and ready to spread on to the Chex. Then I added the food coloring. It was a clumpy, green disaster. I tried adding milk... don't do this. It makes it worse. It was impossible to spread the chocolate out onto the cereal. Since I live in SmallTown, Wyoming, we don't have mint or green melting chips (enter: Amazon). I didn't want to wait two days for Amazon to ship them so I tried the food coloring in the white chips. I had to redo it. The second time I did it, I used white chocolate Almond Bark instead, which is specifically for melting and molding. Right on the package it said "If it gets too thick, add vegetable oil. Do not try to thin with water, milk, or butter". Good to know... I did thin it a bit with veg oil and it worked like a charm. Green Puppy Chow. Brilliant.

Thin Mints are both my husband and my daughter's favorite GS cookie. Girl Scout cookies and Puppy Chow combined into one treat... Who whouldn't love that? Aside from the one road block (had to redo the "green" part), it was pretty easy and sinfully good! If you're addicted to Girl Scout cookies, definitely give this a try!

Cost: $$ If the Chex are not on sale, this will also run you about $15. It cost me $20 because I had to buy a second box of Chex. Just the Chex and cookies are about $9 together... over half of your cost! It's worth it!

"Hershey's S'more Trail Mix"
Ingredients:
1 bag Hershey's melts (8 oz). - I couldn't find them in Small Town so I used two packages of mini Hershey's candy bars broken apart. Same taste.
1 c. Mini Graham crackers - couldn't find these (curse you Small Town!) so I bought Despicable Me minion graham cracker bites. They were fun.
1 can roasted/salted pecan halves - I left them out because my kids don't like nuts so this can easily be altered for nut allergies.
1 c. mini marshmallows

This one was just okay from an adult perspective. From a kid perspective (and I quote)... "BEST... DAY... EVER!" That coming from my 5-year old. So with the kids it was a big hit, and I loved it because it was super easy to throw together (and WAY less messy than the real thing!). All in all it was good for kiddos, but I'd definitely want to try to find another recipe for S'mores snack mix. Stay tuned!

Cost: $ I bought all the ingredients for this and it gave me two batches and I only spent $10 total. Love that!



My daughter helped mix it up, and she loved making little mini S'mores as we dug our way through this one. Big huge hit with the kids!






"Peanut Butter Brownie Puppy Chow"
Ingredients:
6 C. rice Chex cereal
1 C. milk chocolate melts or chips - I used 3/4 C. milk chocolate chips and 1/4 C. Peanut butter chips. YUM!
1/2 C. peanut butter, creamy
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 C. brownie mix, from the box
Optional: Peanut Butter Brownies, Reese's Pieces, or Peanut butter cups (chopped) - I used Reeses pieces because I liked the way it added color!

You do have a few extra steps, but because Puppy Chow is so worth it, it doesn't matter. :) Melt peanut butter and chips together with vanilla extract, dump over cereal and mix, throw into a bag with brownie batter mix, shake like you mean it. Violà - done!




It's the whole puppy chow addiction again. Peanut butter is one of my all time favorite things. Put it together with chocolate and I'm in heaven! Put it together with puppy chow? Best. Thing. Ever! Might be my new favorite snack! Kids loved it. Hubby loved it. And it was easy for them to help. Love that too!

Cost: $ Chocolate chips, cereal, Reeses, peanut butter ... it's only going to run you about $10-$12. Definitely do-able and it makes a huge gallon bag (throw in a couple of cups more of cereal or some brownies chopped up and you can even stretch this one a little!)

 

"Patriotic Trail Mix"

Ingredients:

½ cup flat marshmallows (like Kraft Jet puffed Stacker Mallows) cut into 1½ in. strips and dipped into powdered sugar or corn starch to prevent sticking (don't do too crazy on the sugar... I put too much and it made powdered sugar be all over everything! - see my picture below!)
½ cup twizzlers strawberry or cherry twists cut into 1½ in. strips
1 cup mini square graham crackers (I used Golden Graham cereal instead because when I've made other mixes w/ graham crackers, they always get stale)
1 cup blue m&m's or a package of almond joy pieces which have blue in them (use Almond Joy pieces... the likelihood of getting blue pieces is higher :) )
1 cup cashews or other nuts (optional) - I didn't do it because I used Almond Joys



This was super easy. Cutting the mellows was hardest since they get so sticky. Dipping them in powdered sugar or cornstarch is definitely a good idea, just don't go too overboard, like I did or you'll end up with powdered sugar mess all over your entire trail mix! This is such a cute idea to throw together (literally took me five minutes!) for a good 4th of July party!
Cost: $ Not too expensive. I bought the cereal in stead of the grahams, and that probably cost me a few dollars more. All in all it was between $10 and $12.