16 Ingredients You Need For Mind-Blowing Rice Crispy Treats

The original Rice Krispies Treats hit the back of cereal boxes and American hearts in the early 1940s. The recipe, created by Kellogg employees Mildred Day and Malitta Jense, originated from the company's desire to push its Rice Krispies cereal. After a test run implemented at a Campfire Girls event in Kansas City was a resounding success, the recipe was published on the cereal box in 1941. The rest, as they say, is history.

The recipe hasn't changed much in 80 years. The same basic formula still consists of crispy rice cereal (Rice Krispies is still the favorite but any crispy rice cereal will do), marshmallows, and butter. The latter two are melted and then mixed with the cereal. Once cooled, they are cut into classic squares. This all-American classic is hard to beat. It is well-loved by both adults and kids and it's a no-bake dessert, meaning it's pretty impossible to mess up. However, with its simple flavor profile, we can't help but dream of something more. Here are 15 ingredients to add to your rice crispy treat recipe that will blow your mind.

Coffee and marshmallow is a match made in heaven. The combo gives us flavored latte vibes and is absolutely mouthwatering. It's also super simple. All you need is about 2 to 3 tablespoons of instant coffee. Instant coffee is the freeze-dried or spray-dried remains of coffee beans that have been roasted, ground, brewed, and then stripped of water. Used in many recipes for chocolate cake, ice cream, and icing, it's a great way to add a roasted, nutty flavor to your baked goods and sweets. If your instant coffee has a coarser texture, remember to grind it into a powder before stirring it into your melted marshmallows.

But this delicious ingredient doesn't stop there. Imagine you're the barista and have a full menu of coffee drinks to choose from. Like a cappuccino? Stick with just the instant coffee. Want a vanilla latte? Add some vanilla extract. Is a cinnamon latte more to your liking? Add some ground cinnamon. Honey and cinnamon? Throw in some ground bee pollen with the cinnamon. Your favorite cup of coffee is at your fingertips. 

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but lavender adds a lightness to such a sugary sweet dessert. It's a pleasant surprise and you can add even more freshness with flavors that combine well with lavender, such as lemon. You can incorporate lavender into your recipe in a variety of ways, with culinary lavender flowers, lavender extract, or lavender syrup. You can even make your own homemade lavender extract the same way you make vanilla extract, by allowing the lavender flowers (fresh or dried) to steep in alcohol. For lavender, this usually takes about a month. 

Once you've decided the type of lavender flavoring you want to use, add it to your melted marshmallow mixture. For culinary lavender flowers, you'll want to grind them first and add about 1 to 2 tablespoons, depending on your preference. Lavender extract and lavender syrup are stronger in taste so only about ¼ to 1 tablespoon is required. If you decide to add lemon along with the lavender, the zest pairs well with all lavender flavoring. If you decide you want a stronger lemon taste, a combination of lemon juice, lemon zest, and culinary lavender flowers is best.

Everyone's favorite hazelnut spread, Nutella is a wonderful addition to many sweets, like hot chocolate, brownies, frosting, cakes. For rice crispy treats, try it as a drizzle on top, which is enough to add just a hint of hazelnut to the dessert. Alternatively, you can incorporate the spread into the marshmallow mixture too. This is the way to go if you really love the flavor of hazelnut and want to highlight it. Prefer all your dishes to be 100% homemade? Good news! Making homemade hazelnut spread is a relatively quick and simple process and there are many recipes out there to help you on your way.

Nutella pairs well with so many other ingredients on our list — chocolate, coffee, vanilla, pumpkin. Bring together your favorite combo for a truly incredible flavor burst in your dessert. This is an adult and kid-friendly addition that transforms your rice crispy treats into an easy dessert for family get-togethers.

While more of a step than an ingredient, brown butter shouldn't be overlooked as it truly adds sophistication to rice crispy treats, taking this dessert out of the kid-only zone. Similar to making caramel, browning butter is all about timing. A few seconds too long and it'll burn, so you'll want to watch it carefully. When it turns a deep golden brown and smells nutty, it's done. If you see sediment build-up form in your browning butter, don't panic. This is normal and part of the browning process. Leave the bits in the butter, or if it bothers you for aesthetic reasons, you can simply strain the brown butter to remove the clumps.

Once the browning step is done, simply continue on with a traditional rice crispy treat recipe and your end result will be richer thanks to the brown butter's nutty, caramel taste. You can take this flavor profile a step further by toasting your cereal as well.

Marshmallows come with images of campfires, the great outdoors, and, of course, s'mores. This graham cracker, toasted marshmallow, and slightly melted chocolate sandwich is a summer favorite that you can enjoy anytime thanks to the humble rice crispy treat. Adding graham crackers to your recipe is the perfect way to reimagine this campfire concoction.

You can stir in broken-up graham crackers with the cereal or grind the graham crackers into a powder and sprinkle them on top. Don't forget chocolate for the full s'mores experience. Again, this can be incorporated by stirring chocolate chips into the batter or just drizzling melted chocolate on top.

Other ways to incorporate the graham cracker flavor into your rice crispy treats is by using similar snacks like Teddy Graham crackers, Golden Graham cereal, or even animal crackers. They all have that iconic honey-sweet flavor that is reminiscent of s'mores. 

We love this ingredient as a way to add some fall coziness to rice crispy treats. You can make your own chai spice or use a store bought spice blend to simplify. To make your own masala (spice blend), combine about a ¼ teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and cardamom. Technically, there are many possible combinations you can make, but this is our favorite blend for rice crispy treats. Add your chai spice (store bought or self made) in with the butter, as well as vanilla extract and marshmallows and allow it all to melt together. 

If you'd like to infuse chai tea into your rice crispy treats, add a tablespoon of black tea leaves to the mix. Grind your tea leaves and spices together with a mortar and pestle, spice grinder, or a food processor. Pulse the mixture until it turns into a powder then stir it in.

It may seem unimaginative but don't underestimate the power of salt. It has the ability to enhance the sweetness of a dish, allowing for more of the sugary goodness of this dessert to shine through. You can either add the salt directly into the butter and marshmallow mixture or simply sprinkle it on top as a garnish.

You can also play around with the type of salt that you use. If you decide to add salt to the mixture, we suggest something with a fine grain size, such as table or sea salt. This grain size is preferable as it dissolves quickly into the mixture. If you keep your salt for the finishing touch, try Himalayan or kosher salt. The coarser grain size and texture make both of these a great choice for topping. And if you decide on Himalayan, the pink hue adds a nice pop of color to an otherwise monochrome dish.

Want to make rice crispy treats an adults-only experience? By adding bourbon, not only are you enhancing them with depth of flavor but you are also creating an exclusive experience. If you're going for this option, consider adding brown butter and a coarse salt garnish to enhance the richness. It's rice crispy treats 2.0! 

After browning the butter, remove it from the heat to add the bourbon. This is essential as the alcohol in the bourbon could catch on fire. Then, return the mixture to the heat and continue on with your recipe. You don't need much bourbon; a couple of tablespoons will do the trick, but if you like a boozier flavor, you can add up to a ¼ cup per cup of butter. For the other end of the spectrum, skip the alcohol and stick with bourbon extract instead. No matter how you decide to add the bourbon flavor, with the help of this unusual ingredient you'll add a touch of sophistication to this whimsical treat.

There may be one food that's even more American than rice crispy treats, and that is peanut butter. How Americans feel about peanut butter is the same way Australians feel about Vegemite. They'll die on that hill while the rest of the world looks on confused. It's no surprise that people go nuts over this all-American pairing.

To create this mash-up, simply add creamy peanut butter to your marshmallow-butter mixture and stir until melted, making sure your pot is on low heat. Top it with a sprinkling of coarse salt and the end result is an extra creamy and rich treat that is a huge crowd-pleaser. This would undoubtedly taste great with chunky peanut butter too, if you like a crunchy texture. 

Allergic to peanuts? There are many different types of nut butters out there and all would pair beautifully with rice crispy treats, while adding a unique twist to the dessert.

Rice Krispies, one of the two main ingredients in this dessert, is a cereal. A way to take this dessert to the next level is by simply adding more cereal. Sounds easy, right? You may think so but this addition is deceptively tricky. Add the wrong cereal and your mind-blowing dessert can quickly go bad. It all comes down to choosing the right cereal. But which? 

We recommend going for cereals with a complementary flavor palate. Think Lucky Charms (already marshmallow-based), Coco Puffs (chocolate-based), and Cinnamon Toast Crunch (cinnamon-based). All of these pair perfectly with the buttery marshmallow flavor of this dessert. Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks, Trix, and Froot Loops might not be the best options, as the overwhelming fruit medley of these cereals clashes with the rice crispy treats flavor profile. That's not to say it can't be done, and if you really love Fruity Pebbles, go for it!

Pumpkin is taking over the dessert world. We've got pumpkin brownies, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake. Name a dessert and it has a pumpkin version. Let's add rice crispy treats to the mix. Luckily, pumpkin is an easy ingredient to incorporate into the recipe by using puree. (Make sure to strain your pumpkin puree first.) Once the marshmallows are melted, stir in the pumpkin puree until fully blended. You can also add pumpkin spice or cinnamon. This pairs well with a chocolate drizzle on top of the finished treats. 

If it's that spooky time of year, you could even go the extra mile and shape your rice crispy treats into little pumpkins. After you mix all your ingredients together, allow the mixture to cool slightly. Once it is cool enough to handle, roll clumps of it into little balls. You can then either add chocolate or a pretzel stick (really, anything short, square, and brown) on top for the stump.

This next ingredient has the ability to take your rice crispy treats from homemade to gourmet — and not just because of the price point. Pure vanilla extract is made by soaking vanilla beans in a mixture of water and alcohol. You can purchase it at most grocery stores or even make your own (although it typically takes six to 12 months to steep). You may be wondering, why use vanilla extract and not other sources of vanilla flavoring like vanilla beans or vanilla bean paste? 

Since vanilla isn't the star of the show in rice crispy treats, vanilla extract does the job, elevating the dessert by bringing out the flavors in the marshmallow and butter. Vanilla beans and vanilla bean paste are much stronger and better suited for vanilla-centric desserts. Once the butter and marshmallows have melted together on the stove and the heat is off, stir in 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract and watch this dessert reach bakery level standards.

Chocolate is an ingredient that can be used in a multitude of ways in your rice crispy treats. You can melt it into your marshmallow mixture, add chocolate chips in with the cereal, drizzle hot fudge on top before cooling and cutting, or dip the finished squares into melted chocolate. All of these are great options with different texture and flavor payoffs. Melting chocolate into the dessert makes it more of a dominant flavor. Just a drizzle on top and it plays more of a supporting role. Adding chocolate chips creates little pockets of melty goo in every bite, while encasing the squares in chocolate adds a snap to the bite. 

And it doesn't stop there. You can also play around even more by trying white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate with different percentages of cocoa i.e., bittersweet, semi-sweet, and extra-dark. We recommend bittersweet as it balances best with the sugary sweetness of a rice crispy treat, but that decision is ultimately up to you.

Usually enjoyed with a cup of tea or coffee, Biscoff cookies are an excellent way to add caramel flavor and a slight cinnamon kick to your rice crispy treats. Simply break the cookies into chunky pieces and mix them into the melted marshmallows along with the cereal. These cookies add a slightly different texture and more dimension to the overall flavor of the dessert. 

A big fan of these classic Belgian cookies? Lotus also makes a Biscoff spread featuring the same delicious taste as the cookie. In this case, forget about the cookies and lightly smear the spread on top of your rice crispy treats for a more intense dose of the iconic flavor. Or you can make your own homemade Biscoff cookies. There are many recipes online with slightly varying ingredients, but the basics are flour, a mix of spices, butter, sugar, and vanilla extract. 

Scotcheroos is the name given to the cousin of the rice crispy treat. With the added ingredients of butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, peanut butter, corn syrup, and no marshmallows, Scotcheroos is another recipe promoted by Kellogg and featured on the company's website. For those who love the addition of butterscotch but not so much the corn syrup, you can simply make a traditional recipe and melt butterscotch chips in with the marshmallows and butter for a caramel-like finish.

It is worth noting that corn syrup is an ingredient in many marshmallows made by mainstream brands, such as Kraft's Jet-Puffed. Luckily, newer food brands have come on the scene, bringing with them marshmallows that nix the corn syrup. Also, be aware that some butterscotch chips are made with corn syrup. The moral of story is to check ingredient lists if you want to avoid corn syrup. There are many brands that provide the ingredients for this recipe without the corn syrup, or you can make your own from scratch, using corn syrup substitutes.

Hard pretzels come in all shapes and sizes from a vast array of brands. Original, twist, stick, snap, thin, ring, rod, nibbler ... we could go on. For stirring into your rice crispy treats, our favorites are Rold Gold's tiny twists or snaps from Snyder's of Hanover. These pretzels are great options as they hold their structure but are not too thick. Something like a nibbler or even some brand's originals are too thick, adding a lot of extra bulk to a dessert which is already a bit on the chunky side. 

You can break up your pretzels into smaller pieces if desired or add them whole. They also combine well with other ingredient suggestions like chocolate and peanut butter, and you could even try both. Get experimenting to discover your favorite combo. But if you are just looking for some extra crunch and saltiness, pretzels are a great ingredient to add on.