Rice Crispie Houses are quick, easy, and guaranteed to bring smiles to that special set of goblins you’d like to treat. Make your own cereal treats, cut, decorate and dry. It’s just that easy!
Make the Rice Cereal Treats
The sheet of treats you see below uses two full recipes of treats, but don’t double things. Make one recipe at a time. Click here for the recipe.
Line a 9’x13″ baking pan with aluminum foil. Grease the foil with cooking spray.
Mix up one recipe of Treats and press them firmly down into the pan. Cover the entire bottom, and keep pressing. I usually surrender to the task, and butter one hand so I can really pack those little rice puffs together. Or spray a piece of waxed paper with cooking spray and use that to press the mess. You want dense, compact treats.
Mix up a second recipe of Treats, and press them on top of the first layer. Even things out, leaving the top smooth and level. Again, the buttered hand or greased waxed paper will do the trick.
Let the treats cool completely. A brief stint in the fridge or freezer speeds this along.
Download the Mini Treat House Template here.
Print out two copies. Cut out the houses sections and tape the templates together like I did below.
Cut the Houses
Using the template as a guide, slice the cereal treats into house-shaped pieces.
The template is slightly smaller than your sheet of rice crispie treats so you can trim the edges as needed. Having right angles at each juncture keeps the bottoms of the houses flat.
See the two extra half-houses that you’ll cut? They’re right above and below the template in the photo below. Squeeze them together to form another house. The house on the far right is made from two halves.
Set the houses upright and check that each sits solidly. If not, squeeze and push a bit until you have stable houses.
MAKE ROYAL ICING
To save some time, I’m going to direct you to a royal icing recipe and tutorial from Marian of Sweetopia.
Click here for royal icing recipes on www.sweetopia.net.
You can see some of Marian’s fantastic-amazing-astounding gingerbread houses here.
You’ll need orange icing for the doors and decoration. Mix up and a light cream colored icing for attaching candies to the house. I used a tiny amount of Ivory and a minuscule amount of Egg Yellow gel colors to match the Rice Krispie color.
Pipe the Doors
Pipe oval doors with orange royal icing and a #12 round tip. Press in silver dragees or other small candies for doorknobs.
Gather the Candies
Make Candy Skulls & Bones
Use “Bright White” Candy Melts for bones that will be as bright white as your royal icing. The White Candy Melts look a bit ivory in comparison. Place a handful of melts in a disposable decorating bag. Microwave this for 40 seconds, remove it, and knead the candy. You may need to zap it in additional 10 second increments.
When you have a bag of liquid white chocolate, snip a tiny bit off the end and begin filling the mold’s depressions. While the mold has ribcages, feet with legs, pelvises, and arms with hands, I only made the skull and long-bone chocolates. Tap the mold on the table several times to remove any air bubbles, then put it in the freezer for 10 minutes.
Take the chilled mold from the freezer. Hold it about an inch over the counter and tap it gently to release the chocolates.
For the official instructions, visit the Wilton site or click here.
Decorate the Houses – Roofs First!
Begin with the roof of each house. That way you can pick up and maneuver the rice crispy treat freely without knocking off other decorations. Use ample amounts of icing to attach candies, especially bigger, smoother candies like jelly beans.
When you’ve finished the roofs, lay a piece of parchment or waxed paper down to hold the houses as they dry.
Using that Rice-Krispie colored royal icing, add gumdrop trees, candy corn, white chocolate bones & skulls, and bat sprinkles, until those little treats are encrusted with Halloween bling. Choose candies with at least one flat side to make it easier to keep them firmly attached. Gum balls, for example, will fall off quickly even when the icing’s dry. You can see the candy corn and spearmint leaves in the photo above have long, flat surfaces to hold icing.
On this house I added rectangular cookies to make a smooth roof. Then I piped orange dots, dipped the dots in sprinkles, and piped an orange zigzag border. Populares cookies by Gamesa (see the package here) make great roofs, as do graham crackers.
The house below sports caramel flavored candy corn for roof tiles and a Peeps marshmallow ghost. If you use gumdrops on the corners, like these pumpkins, trim one-third of the drop away to make an inverse corner. This anchors the candy so it’s less likely to detach. I used a pair of cooking shears to trim marshmallow volume off the back of the ghost. The green gumdrops are also halved.
Cut the string on a candy necklace for tiny orange, purple, and green donut-tiles. I’m informed by a certain youngster who knows way too much math that these are shaped like a torus (tori, plural, so tori-tiles?). I love the tori-tiles because sugar pearls or silver dragees attach in the middle so effortlessly. And they form such straight rows and columns!
Chocolate flavored Twizzlers cover this roof. Cut the top of each segment at a 45 degree angle so the sides of the roof meet in a point. And now that it’s too late, wouldn’t the eyes of the white chocolate skull look cool with flowers in the empty orbits? Next year…..
Let the Houses Dry
Set each house on the waxed paper and allow them to dry completely. Royal icing can dry overnight, but may take longer in humid air. Use a fan to speed things up.
Wrap these in plastic bags, tie with a ribbon, and they’re ready for gifting!
Thanks for joining me today, and Happy Halloween!
Kristine
