Chef notes

After a long, dark winter, we’ll welcome the arrival of spring with open arms. Flowers are blooming, the sun is shining and everything just feels a little bit lighter and brighter. Easter is a reflection of this sentiment. It’s a holiday marked by pastels, whether candy, decorated eggs or even your little ones’ outfits. These marshmallow crispy rice treats are bursting with the colors of the holiday. They’re a fun twist on the classic sweet that come together in next to no time and are a welcome addition to any Easter dessert spread.

The secret to these colorful treats is Peeps marshmallows. While traditional crispy rice treats use plain white marshmallows, these use any assortment of the chick-shaped sweets. To create these layered bites, you’ll melt the Peeps in the microwave with a bit of butter, then make four small batches of multi-colored sticky rice cereal. Each individually-colored rice cereal is pressed into a loaf pan on top of one another to create layers. After the mixture sets, you’ll invert the pan onto a cutting board and cut the loaf into small pieces. For even more fun, use cookie cutters to cut the treats into seasonal shapes. Here, we used egg-shaped cookie cutters but bunny, flower or baby chick cookie cutters would be equally fitting — and are encouraged.

These treats can be made ahead of time, which is a bonus for holiday prep. Prepare them a day or two before Easter and store them in an airtight container at room temperature until it’s party time.

Get Ingredients: If you don’t have everything you need on hand, you can easily purchase all of the ingredients (just click the orange button below that says ‘Get Ingredients’). You can pick and choose exactly what ingredients you need based on what’s in your pantry and they’ll be on your doorstep before you know it.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
10 yellow peeps
6 cups crispy rice cereal, divided

10 purple peeps
10 blue peeps
10 pink peeps

Fulfilled by

Preparation

Spray a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a glass bowl, add the yellow Peeps and 1 tablespoon of butter. Microwave for 45 seconds.

Remove the bowl from the microwave and add in 1 ½ cups of rice cereal. Stir until cereal is completely coated in melted marshmallow.

Place the yellow rice cereal into the loaf pan and press it firmly into the pan, covering the bottom of the pan.

Repeat steps 2 through 4 with all other Peeps colors, pressing each layer firmly on top of the previous layer within the loaf pan.

Let the treats cool completely at room temperature for at least 1 hour, or chill in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes.

Run a knife along the perimeter of the pan to loosen the treats. Turn the pan over onto a cutting board. Cut the treat loaf into slices, and then into 3 smaller pieces, or cut the loaf into slices and then use an egg-shaped cookie cutter to cut out egg-shaped treats.