These are the rice cereal treats that dreams are made of. They are like marshmallow clouds: gooey, slightly salty, flavorful, and wayyyyy better than the ones on the back of a cereal box.
This recipe is adapted from Deb Perlman's Smitten Kitchen blog. Her recipe is fantastic, but it has a problem: it does not feed a crowd. Deb Perlman's recipe is for an 8x8 pan and doesn't convert well to a 9x13 pan. Since I don't usually make rice crispy treats just for my family, I always need to use a 9x13 pan. Unfortunately, you cannot just double the 8x8 recipe because you end up with treats that look silly because they are taller than they are wide.
And so, I present to you my recipe for Rice Cereal Treats. A small but highly necessary adaption of a very famous, almost perfect, recipe.
Gooey Crispy Rice Treats
Barely (but necessarily) adapted from Deb Perlman's salted brown butter crispy treats. Makes 24 well-proportioned treats. Time to make: 15 minutes plus time to cool in the pan.
Ingredients
12 tablespoons of butter plus extra butter for greasing the pan
1 wrapper from a stick of butter set aside or a piece of wax paper
9.5 cups of crisp rice cereal measured out into a bowl
16oz bag of mini or regular marshmallows
1/4 heaped teaspoon kosher salt or flaked sea salt
STEP ONE
Using wax paper or your butter wrapper, butter or oil a 9x13 inch pan with 2 inch sides and set aside pan and butter wrapper.
STEP TWO
Brown your butter. Using a large, wide bottomed pot (I use the one I cook pasta in) melt butter over medium heat. Stir it occasionally for about 5 minutes while the butter heats and then browns. As the butter begins to brown, make sure to stir constantly scraping any brown bits from the bottom Be careful because butter goes from browning to burning very quickly. Once you can see more than a few tiny flakes of brown goodness, turn heat as low as it can go and quickly add your salt and marshmallow. Stir vigorously until your marshmallows have melted. With full sized marshmallows this takes a few minutes and I use my spoon to smoosh out lumps. When there are only a few small lumps, add your cereal and stir vigorously until incorporated.
STEP THREE
Pour marshmallow-cereal mixture into your pan. Gently press on the top of the mixture with the buttery side of your butter wrapper or with a piece of wax paper to bars to a uniform height. Allow to cool for 60 minutes before you cut them.
Bars will keep covered on the counter (and out of the sun) for 3 days.
This is so good! Browning the butter makes it not only more delicious, but also makes it harder to lose track of the time/temperature & allowing the sugar to get too hot, so they stay chewy. And it fits perfectly into a 9x13 pan!