Valentine's Rice Krispy Treats

Rice Krispy Treats are like my ultimate comfort food – I remember making these with my great grandmother, we called her Ooby (real name Ruby), when I was a little girl. We had these every time we visited her farm. I remember mixing the marshmallows, the crunch and crackle of the Rice Krispies when they mixed together, and I remember sitting at her table, on top of a stack of phone books to eat them. It’s truly a nostalgic treat for me. So I wanted to recreate them with my little girls, and I have a feeling we will be making these a lot more often!

I'll be honest with you - my first round of Rice Krispies Treats did not turn out the way I expected! When I went to cut them into heart shapes, they were so hard! Like, really Michelle? How do you mess up Rice Krispy treats?? Well, let me tell you how so you don't make the same mistake.  

First, I burned the butter. Let me just take a second and tell you guys, I can't cook. I try, I really do! It's just not my thing. But if I ended up with the most amazing rice krispy treats in the end, I can’t wait to see what you all do! Back to the story of how I messed up my rice krispy treats (face palm). So, I burned the butter because I had the heat wayyy up on the stovetop. Like 9 of 10. But I didn’t stop there. I went ahead and added in the marshmallows, which made them tinted with dark swirls of burned butter. Then I added in the rice krispy cereal bits and set them in my baking pan. Then I put them in the refrigerator. I’m not sure why to be completely honest but this was probably my biggest mistake. When I took them out 10 minutes later they were ROCK HARD! Ugh.

So I tried again and they came out perfect.

Since I’ve already gone over how I epically failed at making these simple treats, let me break that down my success for you, too!

I melted 5 tablespoons of butter with a teaspoon of vanilla extract on low. Then I added in 6 cups of mini marshmallows. You can use the big ones too, its just a little easier with the baby marshmallows! You could even try the marshmallow crème that is all gooey already!

Once they were good and gooey, I took them off the burner and added in 6 cups of rice krispies and mixed them together real good. Then I took my baking pan which I had sprayed cooking spray all over and spread them out in there, mixing them a little more if I saw clumps of marshmallow spread. I let them sit room temperature for about 20 minutes and plopped them into my cutting board.

Next, I took my handy dandy heart shaped cookie cutter and began cutting heart shapes. I took the leftovers and ate them. Don’t judge me! Actually, some of them I was able to smoosh some back together to get an extra treat or two out of the bunch.

Originally I bought some silicone heart shape molds to make the rice krispies in, but because of the roundness of the bottom part of the silicone baking sheet, I thought flat would be easier to decorate so I went this route instead and used the silicone baking tray for melting crayons for Valentine’s cards instead! (Another blog post on that coming soon too!)

Next, I called over my little helper Ollie to help me decorate. This kid loves to decorate everything. She has so many thoughts and opinions on how things should look and what should go where, she’s a little Joanna Gaines in the making. During Christmas she is in hog heaven, but so am I so I’m glad we have that shared interest together!

We melted a cup of white chocolate chips in the microwave and added 2 drops of neon pink food coloring. I’m sure they have a non-neon version, but we just used a couple drops and it ended up being a really soft pink. Plus that’s all they had at my local grocery store so we went with it!  We used a little espresso spoon to drizzle the melted chocolate over them, or spread a little on top. Next we took a few different kinds of sprinkles and spread them on top, and finalized our design with the always fun to see, and never fun to eat, candy googly eyes!

Finally, we took some cute photos to share with you all and dug in!