Halloween Rice Crispy Treats with tips and tricks

This week while my kids were off track, we drug out the food coloring, cookie cutters and went totally crazy with dessert staple.

I mean holy-cow-that’s-a-lot-of-food-coloring crazy.

Behold the Extreme Home Makeover edition of the basic Kellogg’s Rice Krispy treat.

*EEK*

I kinda love them.

The end result was crazy-bright, marshmallowy mash-ups that are so stinkin’ cute and not much harder to make than the original.

The sky’s the limit here for the colors, patterns and shapes you could use. Here’s what we came up with:

Ghosts & Stripes

Bats

Pumpkins & Stripes

Plain Stripes & Even Quilt Block Shapes (ha!)

Mini Bites

Once you get started it’s sorta hard to stop.

Everyone knows how to make these so I’ll skip the full tutorial thing. However, there were a few tweaks I made to pull these off that I’ll pass along:

1. To get the color super saturated, you’ll need copious amounts of food coloring – like a full teaspoon of the Wilton jells for most colors. For the black, it’s more like a full jar … um, seriously.  (Try not to think about it … it’s only once a year. 🙂

First batch with 1/4 tsp. food coloring jell: too pastel-y

Second batch with a generous 1 tsp. jell: much better

2. The other trick to getting a solid color is to use half the amount of cereal the original recipe calls for. Here’s what I wound up doing:

3. To make the stripes, cut long strips from solid blocks of color (like on the tray above) and mush them together.

This worked much better than taking small clumps of each color and trying to form it by hand.

4. Use a generous amount of non-stick coooking spray on the cookie cutters. You’re welcome.

5. Let the cereal cool for 10-15 minutes at room temperature before cutting. That way the cereal mix will be somewhat set, but easier to work with. Once your shapes are made, go ahead and refrigerate to set.

Have Fun!