Looking for a fun Saint Patrick's Day dessert? Try out these fun and festive shamrock Rice Krispie treats and maybe you'll have the luck of the Irish on your side.
What are shamrock rice krispie treats?
Shamrock Rice Krispie treats are a combination of green food coloring, marshmallows, butter, and Rice Krispies cereal that is then cut with a clover shaped cookie cutter. These super simple four ingredient no bake dessert treats can be made in 15 to 20 minutes.
These treats are perfect to add to the dessert table at St Patrick's Day. They also work well for themed birthdays such as "Lucky one" birthdays. But, of course, you could make them for any occasion you wish.
Variations
The version of these treats detailed below are green and cut into shamrock shapes. However, if you want to spice things up a little bit here a few other ideas:
- Use lime jello: you can replace a green food coloring and make lime flavored treats by using lime Jello you'll get both lime flavor and a green color.
- Add some sprinkles: want to make your shamrock shine? Add some gold sprinklers or even some green sprinkles for an extra little glitter of green.
- Use green icing: instead of using green food coloring you could make original Rice Krispie treats and then simply add some green icing to the top.
- Dip them in green: you could either still remake green food coloring or original but then you could do an additional green coating by dipping your shamrocks in green candy melts.
How to Make these treats
These treats are very simple to make they are a combination of green Rice Krispie treats with food coloring and cookie cutter Rice Krispie treats using a four-leaf clover cookie cutter.
Supplies
- spatula
- large stock pot or Microwave Safe Bowl
- Measuring Cup
- 9 x 13 baking pan
- Four leaf clover Cookie Cutter
Ingredients
- 6 Cups Rice Krispies Cereal
- 16 oz of Jet Puff Marshmallows
- 4 Tbs Salted Butter
- (optional) non-stick canola oil spray
- Food Coloring
Instructions
Step One
Gather together your cookie cutter, pan, microwave safe bowl or pot, spatula, green food coloring, Rice Krispies cereal, butter and marshmallows.
It's also important to make sure that you grease your spatula and pan before you get started. You can use butter or a nonstick cooking spray to do the greasing.
The marshmallows when melted will be extra super sticky so make sure that you get a good consistent coating all over. Instead of using butter or spray in your pan you could also use a non-stick pan.
Step Two
Next up is to melt together your marshmallows and butter. You can either use the stove top or microwave to do the melting.
The microwave method takes just about 2 to 3 minutes while the stove top method takes upwards of eight minutes. The stove top method, however, provides more control over the amount of heat you use when melting your marshmallows.
Pot on the stove method:
- Take your butter and measure four tablespoons.
- Turn your stove on the low heat and place your pot with butter in it on top of your burner.
- Stir your butter occasionally while that melts.
- Once your butter is close to being fully melted, add in your 16 oz of marshmallows.
- Stir your marshmallows frequently while they melt.
- When your marshmallows are close to being fully melted remove them from the heat and continue stirring until they have fully melted and combined with your butter.
Bowl in the microwave method:
- Grab 16 oz of marshmallows and four tablespoons of butter and plop them into a microwave safe bowl.
- Stick your bowl into your microwave and heat for around 30 to 60 seconds.
- Remove your bowl with butter marshmallows from the microwave and stir everything well.
- Stick everything back in your microwave for 30 seconds.
- Once your 30 seconds is up, stir everything well again.
- Repeat heating and stirring until marshmallows are almost completely melted.
- Remove them from the microwave for the final time and stir well until everything is thoroughly melted and combined.
Step Three
Grab your green food coloring and add several drops to your marshmallow mixture. Stir everything up as you add the food coloring and stop when you get the shade of green you desire.
Step Four
Grab your 6 cups of Rice Krispies cereal and slowly begin to add that to your marshmallow mixture. You don't want to dump it all that at once or it will be very difficult to fold your cereal in and get a consistent mixture.
of note, when you add the cereal it may mute the green color and even yellow it a little bit. Feel free to add a little extra green food coloring at this point just make sure to stir it in well.
Step Five
Now to get your marshmallow and cereal mixture into your pan. Use your spatula and dump your mixture from your bowl into your greased pan.
Lightly use your spatula to press the mixture down into the pan so that it is an equal thickness across the pan.
Step six
Your treats need to cool before using your four leaf clover cookie cutter on them. Set them aside for around 30 minutes or you can pop them in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes.
Grease your cookie cutter and press it into your cold treat mixture to cut out four leaf clover shapes.
With that you're ready to enjoy!
Pro Tips
- Use a knife: sometimes the treats can be a little thicker than your cookie cutter, and this case, try to use a greased knife to cut around the edges of the cookie cutter to get a cleaner, crisper shape.
- Smush your leftover treats into a square to get more clovers: use the treats left over from around the edge of your cookie cutters smash them into an even thickness and then cut a few additional clovers for additional treats.
- Use super fresh marshmallows: it's important to use new, unopened and fresh marshmallows. Still, old marshmallows can result in stiff hard and compact treats.
- Add extra food coloring: when you're adding a green food coloring initially make your color just a smidge darker than your desired color because as you add cereal the color will become a little lighter.
- Combine blue and yellow: if you don't have green food coloring you can combine blue food coloring and yellow food coloring to get the green you desire.
Store your treats
- For maximum freshness you should eat your treats within five or so days.
- Make sure that you keep them zipped and a ziplock bag or sealed in an airtight container such as a Pyrex with a lid put on it.
- For maximum texture you should keep them at room temperature. Putting them in the fridge can make them a bit hard and keeping them in a temperature that is too warm can make them fall apart and melty.
Freeze treats for later
- If you make extra treats or perhaps want to make these in advance before you need them, you can freeze them for six plus months.
- In order to freeze them, you need to either individually wrap them with wax paper or flash freeze them.
- To flash freeze put them on a cookie sheet so that they are separated and not touching stick them in the freezer until they are frozen.
- Once they are wrapped or flash frozen, put them in freezer bags and freeze them in your freezer.
- When you're ready to eat, you can simply remove them from the freezer and let them sit at room temperature until they thaw.
Shamrock Rice Krispie Treats
Equipment
- Spatula
- 9x13 Pan
- large stock pot
- Large mixing bowl
- measuring cups
- clover shaped cookie cutter
Ingredients
- 16 oz Marshmallows
- 4 tbs Salted Butter
- 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
- green food coloring
Instructions
- Grab your ingredients and equipment and get them all gathered into one place.
- Take some butter or non-stick cooking spray and grease your cookie cutter, pan and spatula.
- Add 4 tbs of butter as well as 16 oz of marshmallows into your bowl.
- Heat them in the microwave for 30 - 60 seconds.
- Remove and stir them together well.
- Heat again for 30 seconds, then stir again.
- Heat and stir in 30 second intervals until marshmallows are well melted.
- note: if you want to melt them on the stove instead of using the microwave, there are detailed instructions above in the post.
- Take your green food coloring and add it to your marshmallows.
- Stir food coloring in well.note; add a little more color than your desired result as the cereal addition in the next step will lighten the color some.
- Take your 6 cups of cereal and pour slowly into your green marshmallow mixture.
- Once cereal is combined with marshmallows, use your spatula to move the mixture into your pan.
- Lightly press the mixture into the pan to create an even thickness across the entire pan.
- Allow treats to cool. Typically 30 minutes is sufficient.
- Take your clover shaped cookie cutter and cut treats.
Nutrition information provided is just an estimate and may vary based on specific ingredients used.
