Easter Egg Crispy Treats

I had some crispy treat mixture and some icing left over from different projects so I thought I’d try to make an Easter egg.

I shaped the crispy treat roughly into an egg shape and then I dipped it in candy melts so that it would hold together.  It’s very hard to get the candy melt smooth, but I knew I could cover any bumps with the icing.

Then I just covered the egg shape with different colors of icing using different piping tips.  It looked pretty, but I’m not sure it looked very ‘egg’ like.  I would be a good way for children to practice their piping technique.

Crispy Treat Nests

I try really hard to make our favorite baking ideas applicable all year round, and Easter nests are one of my favorite things.  I hosted a dinosaur party a couple of weeks ago and was trying to think of a dinosaur themed crispy treat.  I was also in my Easter mode and so nests were on my mind and then I thought why not make ‘pterodactyl nests’.  I made fruity pebble crispy treats as they seem to be all children’s favorites.

But instead of putting them in rectangular cake pan and cutting them out with cookie cutters, I piled a spoonful of the crispy treats into muffin cases. 


Once they were cool I used a spoon to flatten out the center to make a nest shape.  If you try to do that when the crispies are hot, they will just stick to the spoon.  I could have left the nest just like that and filled them with eggs and chicks for Easter, but because it was for a party I needed the nests to be very durable so I could get them to the party and then the children could get them home as favors, without them falling apart.  I melted some white candy melts and used a basting brush to put a layer on top of the nests.

Once it was dry, I turned the nests over and coated the bottom to make them really strong and taste extra sweet.


I piped a ring of icing around the nest and covered in with flower sprinkles to make a pretty dinosaur nest and then I added some big flowers made from mini M&Ms glued onto a mini nilla wafer with icing.

At the party the boys put more jelly beans around their nests to look as if they were built from rocks and they made ‘man eating’ flowers.  We also topped the nests with pterodactyl cookies.  So you can now make Easter nests year round and make them dinosaur, lizard, snake or birds nests. 

Owl Crispy Treats

I usually make crispy treats that are flat and cut out with cookie cutters but I’d been asked if I could make an owl.  I took a small handful of the crispy treat mixture when it was slightly warm and shaped it into an egg.  I covered in with yellow candy melt, as that was the color I had available, but any color would have done as I was covering it in Oreo crumbs.

I always cover my crispy treats in candy melts because otherwise they aren’t as durable, they tend to disintegrate when you try to decorate them.  By the time I came to decorate the owl the candy melt was dry, so I covered it with icing and then dipped it in Oreo crumbs.  If the candy melt had still been wet I could just have dipped it in the Oreo crumbs and not worried about the icing.

I’ve made owl cupcakes before and usually use Oreos for the eyes, but I didn’t have any, so used chocolate candy melts and eyes the Wilton makes.  I used the same chocolate candy melts for the wings, but they actually would have looked better if they had been bigger, so I would use Oreos in future.  The ‘feather horns’ that owls have were made out of a candy melt cut in half and the beak was a banana runt.  Once I’d made him I decided his beak was too big, so I cut it down, which looked much better, but when I tried to make the horns smaller they looked worse.  Overall I thought he looked cute and he was very easy to make. Definitely a project younger children could easily handle.

Girly Truck Crispy Treat

I’ve been asked to host a ‘transport’ themed workshop and I’ve been experimenting with different ideas.  I wanted to see if I could make a truck look girly as there will be girls as well as boys at the workshop.  I cut the truck out of crispy treats and coated it in white candy melts.  I dipped it and it would have been better if I’d brushed the candy melt on as it was quite uneven.

By the time I’d iced the truck and filled it with it’s ‘cargo of coal’ (oreo crumbs), it looked a bit like a dump truck and it definitely looked like a girls truck.

My daughter loved it and now we need to experiment with different girly cargos, such as flower sprinkles or pink candy.

School Bus Crispy Treats

I bought a whole lot of candy melts on sale a few weeks ago and on a whim bought some yellow ones, not really knowing what I’d do with them.  Then I was asked to host a ‘going to kindergarten’ party and suddenly thought maybe I could make a school bus out of crispy treats.

I don’t have a school bus cookie cutter so I had to modify a truck shape. I dipped the crispy treat in the candy melt and it didn’t cover very evenly.  It would definitely have been better to brush the candy on.

The end result looked enough like a school bus for my 3 year old to know what it was, but it was quite hard to make, so I don’t think it would work for a kindergartener with no icing experience.  It was fun to try though.

Crispy Treat Recipe

I’ve always loved rice crispy treats.  My Mom used to make little nests with us at Easter using rice crispies covered in chocolate, so one day I tried to make them with my children.  I didn’t have a recipe and they were OK, but then last Christmas we tried to make a recipe I’d found in a magazine which used Fruity Pebbles cereal instead and my kids were hooked.  Every child I’ve ever fed them to has loved them.

The Recipe – It’s super easy!
Melt a stick of butter with a 10oz bag of mini marshmallows over a low heat, stirring continuously or else they will burn on the bottom of the pan. 

Add an 11oz box of Fruity Pebbles or any other cereal your children love.

Mix well and put into a baking pan lined with waxed paper. If you try to work with the crispy treats when they are warm they just stick to your hands, and everything else. Leave them in a big heap for about 20 minutes until they are cool and less sticky.

For the hearts below I pressed the crispy treats into the pan until they were about an inch thick, but sometimes I need them thicker if I’m making a 3-D shape.  Press a cookie cutter into the crispy treat to get an outline of the shape.  Unless you are using very sharp metal cutters, they probably won’t go all the way through, so use a knife to cut along the outline.

 
Anything you can make out of cookie dough you can usually make out of a crispy treat, but less detailed designs work best.
For the hearts below, which I used for my son’s preschool party, I inserted a lollipop stick into the heart so it would be easier for the children to hold while they were decorating and eating the crispy treat.

Then I dipped the hearts in red candy melts.  You have to push the crispy treats together quite hard so that they are firm enough to be dipped.  Also make sure you get the candy melt over the stick slightly, so that it holds the heart in place.  You can also use a basting brush to brush the candy coating onto the crispy treat.

Make sure you follow the melting directions on the back of the candy melt package.  The first time I used them I didn’t and over cooked the candy.  It went hard and was unusable.  I now know that if it goes hard you can add a couple of tablespoons of Crisco and it will go liquid again.  I usually do that anyway as it makes the candy melts more liquid and easier to use, and also you use less because they are quite expensive.

Then I sprinkled pink sugar on a few…….

…..heart sprinkles on some others……..

…..and conversation hearts on the others. My son’s class loved them.