Welcome to the Marshmallow Treat side of "Happy Home Cooking!"
We're making the Classic Marshmallow Treat, 5 different ways!
The following Base Recipe has been adapted from "The Novice Chef." Her Tiktok video is featured below.
The Base Recipe:
Variation #1: Brown Butter Marshmallow Treat
Simply brown your butter before adding marshmallows.
•Browning butter is so easy! If you hop online, you’ll see many tutorials on how to brown butter, but I like my version as I feel like it’s less likely to burn on me.
•Grab unsalted butter, and put it on a low heat. I usually take my butter right out of the fridge, so I melt it slowly on low heat.
•Once it’s all melted, I turn up the heat to a medium low and begin to cook the milk solids. I’m looking for froth and bubbles.
•Then, I stir, stir, stir , you don’t want to give them rest to burn – so you do need to stay next to your pot.
•You’ll see the milk solids separate and then begin to toast. It smells SO GOOD! A very nutty, delicious smell.
•Once the mixture turns a golden to golden brown color, that’s where you’ll want to stop.
•My biggest tip is to watch your heat, low and slow is best because it can go from nicely golden to burnt in seconds.
•Take it off the heat as soon as it’s browned to your liking. Add salt. And store in the fridge.
•But for our purposes, once it’s browned we’re going to coat 24 ounces of marshmallows in it, with all the yummy brown bits.
- Increase the butter from 2 sticks to 2 sticks and 3 tblsp to allow for the evaporation of the water in the butter.
-Make sure to scrape the sides with a spatula.
-Don’t forget the salt! Add your flavoring, for the Brown Butter Marshmallow treats I added caramel flavoring.
-Once everything is melted and combined, then add your mix ins, rice krispies in this case.
-Pour into your pan, and then cool.
Variation #2: Trix-y Treats
Using Marshmallow Treat recipe, swap Trix Cereal for Rice Krispies.
Variation #3: Potato Chip Marshmallow Treat
•It’s important to remember that when working with salty chips, you don’t add more salt to your mixture, so here we’re going to omit it.
•We’re gonna use the same base recipe as before, but add some weight to our dry ingredients. A Family Size bag is probably good, around 16 ounces.
•The chips really seemed to soak up the mixture so start with less and add more until you get the consistency you want, but also watch out for putting too much. You don’t want to cancel out the ooey gooey.
•I didn’t break up the chips before pouring them in because I knew they’d break up as I combined it with the melted butter and marshmallow mixture.
•I use caramel extract with this recipe just for a different type of flavor. My goal was to add a caramel topping, and I think that’s a splendid idea to really give that caramel punch, but I didn’t have time to make it happen this week.
•And of course, I added sprinkles for some fun color.
Variation #4: Cheez-It Mallow Treats
•This treat combines two of my fave things, gooey mallows and snacky cheesy crackers.
•I bought a Family size box, 21oz, and used them all, save for the small handful I taste tested while melting the marshmallow mixture.
•I added some sprinkles to break up the colors a bit so it wasn’t all orange, and I really think it adds something.
•Overall, this became one of my fave experiments and I will definitely make this again.
•And of course, it’s newly trending on places like TikTok, so I officially feel like part of the cool crowd.
•Ask your kids if they’ve seen this! I bet they have! Either way, make it for them, they will absolutely love it!!
For fun, I topped this delish treat with an easy, microwave fudge! It hardens on the top with a nice, easy bite.
Variation #5: Fudge-Stuffed Marshmallow Treat
•I started with the classic recipe.
•Make sure you’re not dropping the mallows into the hot melted butter or it’ll splash on you. Owie! I place enough in the pot to cover the bottom using my hands, and then dump in the rest.
•Coat them all evenly with the melted butter and keep mixing until completely melted. COMPLETELY.
•Then add your salt and flavoring.
•Don’t take your heat over low to medium.
•When you see the last of the marshmallows start to melt, that’s when I’d absolutely turn it down to low.
•You’ll want it on low when you stir in your mix-ins.
•Now here comes the fun part!!
•Pour the mixture into your buttered, prepared dish.
•I’m just gonna say it… you will probably want gloves for this because the mixture is hot. I’m talking food safe gloves, not the kind you use to clean your dishes.
•But if not, you can use the end of a kitchen utensil, preferably with a round bottom.
•Flatten out the mixture first. I put some oil on my parchment, just a light film so it would easily come away from the hot mixture.
•Usually I let it stay until completely cooled, but we need to work quickly while the mixture is still hot…
•Lightly oil up your hands and the bottom of your kitchen tool, preferably with canola oil as it has less flavor but use what you have.
•When I say kitchen tool, you’re looking for something round at the bottom. I used the bottom of my metal whisk and it worked great for starting to carve out the holes.
•Push the back of the tool into the hot mixture to make out where you want your crevices to be. I made 12 holes for my 9X13 pan, but I made them quite large. Next time I will do more holes, not as large. But as always, go with what you like best.
•And then I make the holes. Start off small with the tool, then get your fingers into it and push the sides out, making the holes as small or as large as you’d like.
•Then, as a final step before the mixture has cooled, put the lightly oiled parchment paper back on top and do another smooth out.
•The top will un-smooth as you’re making your crevices, but once they’ve been made you can make the top smooth again. Don’t worry that your crevices will disappear, they won’t. They may budge slightly, but they’ll remain.
•And then, you let it cool. Leave it alone. Don’t touch, for at least 3 hours.
• Once cooled, make the fudge.
• Pour into the crevices in your cooled mallow treat. And then leave again for at least 3 hours, or more. I usually leave mine overnight.
Taste-Tester Reviews
Of all the people who taste-tested these yummy Marshmallow Treat variations, the one that came on top was the Fudge-Stuffed Marshmallow Treat. Second was the Potato Chip, then Brown Butter. The Trix and Cheez-It were on the bottom of the list of favorites, but they were still enjoyed by all.