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Caramel Rice Krispies Treat Sand Castle

June 12, 2012 This post may contain affiliate links.

Caramel Rice Krispies Treat Sand Castle

Build a castle to be the center of attention at your beach themed party! This Caramel Rice Krispies Treat Sand Castle is a simple dessert that will have your guests’ jaws dropping!

Caramel Rice Krispies Treat Sand Castle

A vacation at the beach wouldn’t be complete, at least for kids, without building a sand castle. I can remember spending the afternoon sitting in the warm sand listening to the ocean waves crash against the shore while shoveling sand in to buckets and sand molds and painstakingly constructing my own castle, trying to hurry before the tide moved in and took my creation back out into the deep blue sea.

It’s been a long (oh, so very long) time since I played in the sand like that, but just recently I had the amazing opportunity to visit and sleep in a castle.

Castell Deudraeth

Well, actually the building we stayed in is a 19th-century castellated house, but it was an exciting experience just the same. It looks like a castle, right? Castell Deudraeth was our home for two spectacular nights while we visited the village of Portmeirion in Wales. The village is on a cliff overlooking and estuary that leads to the Irish Sea.

If we hadn’t been so busy, hiking and dining during our stay, (the food was fabulous,) we could have gone down to the beach and spent a lazy afternoon building a sand castle. Instead, I decided to wait until I got home and make one in my kitchen.

sand castle dessert

I found my culinary inspiration in sand molds, once again. There are just so many clever culinary uses for those simple plastic beach toys. So far, I’ve used them to create Marshmallow Sea Creatures and Peanut Butter Fudge Starfish; today I’ll show you how to make a caramelized cereal treat using a sand castle mold.

This crispy treat recipe, from Mouldings, Inc., has been in my recipe box since the early 90’s. The company used to make plastic molds for the purpose of creating crispy treats, microwave cakes, jello and more. Sadly, I haven’t seen these molds in stores in many years; I did, however, find the set, pictured here, for sale on Overstock.com, if you are interested. I have many of these molds, and love using them, but discovered the sand molds work just as well for crispy treats.

You could use any shape sand mold to make your caramel rice cereal treats. I chose to make a castle which can be used for quite a variety of occasions:

  • beach or pool party (use sand and sea shells)
  • Father’s Day (add some flags that say, “Dad, you are the king of our castle)
  • princess party (eliminate the sand and add some colorful flags or banners)
  • Renaissance festival event  (eliminate the sand and add a moat)
  • Halloween party (use Cocoa Krispies to make a dark and sinister looking castle)

As a matter of fact, my friend is hosting a Renaissance party this weekend so I gave her the castle to display along with her other desserts. I can’t wait to hear what her guests think about it.

Build a castle to be the center of attention at your beach themed party! This Caramel Rice Krispies Treat Sand Castle is a simple dessert that will have your guests' jaws dropping!

UPDATE: I recently had a conversation with a reader who was concerned that these molds are not labeled as food safe; she suggested lining them with plastic wrap. I thought that was a really great suggestion. I also had a reader ask if the traditional rice krispies treat recipe would work for this project. So …

how to make sand castle rice krispies treat

I tested both, the plastic wrap and the traditional recipe, and happily both worked perfectly. Just know that it will take 3 full recipes of the marshmallow cereal treats to create this castle. 

 

The pictures below were made using the caramel rice cereal treats in this recipe, but were molded without the use of plastic wrap.

 

Cereal Treat Sand Castle (serves 18-24)

 

Ingredients:

19 cups (18 ounce box) crisp rice cereal (Rice Krispies Cereal)
2 sticks butter (8 ounces)
2 cups light brown sugar
1 3/4 cups light corn syrup
1 can sweetened condensed milk
optional, sandy crumbs from cereal or cookies

Supplies Needed:

medium saucepan with lid
heatproof spatula or wooden spoon (it is best to butter it)
sand castle molds, washed and dried*
optional, sea shells

*I have found these plastic beach toys in discount stores, dollar stores, department stores and even drug stores. They are easy to find all summer long. The actual molds I used were purchased for $1.59 at the Christmas Tree Shop last summer.

Instructions:

Pour crisp rice cereal in very large heatproof bowl.

how to make rice krispies treat

Cut butter into small pieces. Place butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan. Heat on medium, stirring as needed, until butter melts and mixture begins to bubble around the edges. Place lid on pan for one minute. Remove lid and allow to boil for 2 more minutes, without stirring.

rice krispies treat recipe

Remove from heat and add sweetened condensed milk, stir to combine. Return to medium heat and allow to boil for three minutes. Remove and immediately pour over crisp rice cereal. Don’t scrape the bottom of the pan.

making rice krispies treats

Use a heatproof spatula or wooden spoon to stir the cereal until it is well coated with the caramel. This mixture will be extremely hot, so be careful not to touch it. Allow mixture to cool, stirring it a frequently, until you can easily touch it. Just don’t let it cool too much or it will get too hard and wont be easy to press into the molds.

molding rice krispies treats

LINE YOUR SAND MOLDS WITH PLASTIC WRAP AS PICTURED ABOVE!Then spoon some of the cereal treat mixture into your plastic mold. Press down firmly making sure the caramelized cereal fills all the crevices. Fill each mold to the top and press down using your spatula or spoon to really compress the cereal in the mold.

making cereal rice krispies treats

Note: I started by using a sand castle mold that was about 4″ long, but found the features of the castle wall were just too small to really show up well, so I decided to use a larger set of molds. I made the first piece, pictured in the upper right hand corner, and didn’t make sure to really press the cereal mixture into all the crevices in the mold. As you’ll see with the  pictures below, I did a much better job filling the molds so all the details really showed up. I was even able to fix the first one.

cereal sand castles

To un-mold the cereal treats, just turn the mold upside down and shake. The molded piece should fall right out. If it doesn’t, pull the sides of the plastic mold away from the cereal treat and shake gently and it should fall out. You can spray your molds with cooking spray, but I found it unnecessary.

building cereal sand castles

Assemble your castle however you’d like. My sand mold set really didn’t have much to work with; I couldn’t figure out how to add any of the square pieces (see the orange sand mold in one of the pictures above,) so my castle is just a large rectangle with a lovely large courtyard. Each set of sand castle molds will be different, so you can get as creative as you’d like with your castle.

If you have one of these Nordic Ware Castle Bundt pans, you could use the cereal treat recipe in it as well. It will make a really great looking castle. Of course, buying this pan may cost more than sand molds, but the shape is really nice. I’ve included some links for castle sand molds below, but I couldn’t find the exact molds that I used.

You can display your cereal treat sand castle on a large cutting board, on a cardboard cake board, or just on a table covered with edible sand (I used crushed Rice Krispies.)

Keep your crispy castle stored in an airtight container for a week or more. I used to make bunny shaped caramel crispy treats using this recipe every year at Easter and packaged them in cellophane bags and they would keep for several weeks.

Molds that could be used for this project that are available on Amazon.com.

 

Embrace the beautiful weather that we are having and make some of these gorgeous and scrumptious Summer Fun Recipes.

This summer beat the heat by spending time in the kitchen creating cute food for a party or an afternoon snack. See over 100 Summer Fun Recipes that will make any pool party, summer picnic, or lazy afternoon more exciting. 

Filed Under: Summer Fun Recipes Tagged With: Beach-and-Pool-Party, Candy, Rice Krispies Treat Pops, Rice-Crispy-Treats, Rice-Krispies-Treats, Summer

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mama Jodi

    June 18, 2012 at 10:37 pm

    …pinned it, by the way.

    Reply
  2. Trish - Mom On Timeout

    June 19, 2012 at 5:15 am

    You are both crazy and brilliant! Sharing on Facebook 🙂 Thanks so much for linking up at Mom On Timeout!

    Reply
  3. Beth (www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com)

    June 22, 2012 at 10:17 am

    This is AMAZING!! You are so creative =-) I am pinning to hopefully do as an end of the summer cake. LOVE it! I featured this at TGIF this week (http://www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/2012/06/tgif-linky-party-35.html). Thanks for linking up and I look forward to seeing what you link up today!! Beth =-)

    Reply
    • Beth Jackson Klosterboer

      June 22, 2012 at 11:59 am

      Thanks for the feature and the pin. This is a really fun project to do and I hope you enjoy making one of your own.

      Reply
  4. Demettre

    July 25, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    Super idea

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    September 26, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    WOO, you are too clever and this is too much fun…now have to replan all of my menu. Have a child coming who is not allowed dairy or eggs, any ideas for replacing condensed milk???

    thank-you for sharing your brilliance
    annette

    Reply
    • Beth Jackson Klosterboer

      September 27, 2012 at 1:02 am

      Thanks, Annette. I found this on-line:

      Evaporated Milk
      Evaporated milk is just concentrated milk (with about 60% of the water removed). For an easy substitute, use Vance's Foods DariFree Original Powder Gluten-Free Beverage. Rather than mixing it as milk, mix 1/2 c. of the powder with 1 c. of hot water. I used this substitute in this Dairy Free Fudge recipe.

      Sweetened Condensed Milk
      Sweetened condensed milk is just evaporated milk with sugar added. To make your own dairy free version, make 1 c. of evaporated milk (recipe above) and, over medium heat, dissolve 1-1/2 c. of granulated
      sugar in the mixture.

      I hope this helps.

      Reply
  6. Anonymous

    September 28, 2012 at 2:26 pm

    Thanks Beth, I will see if i can find it in Australia, we seem to be missing lots of your wonderful spices/blends. Will do a few experiments. How wonderful it is to be able to see how talented people are from all over the world.
    Best wishes
    Annette

    Reply
    • Beth Jackson Klosterboer

      September 28, 2012 at 2:34 pm

      Good luck, I hope you can find what you need. I enjoy knowing that readers from all over the world see my creations. I hope to travel to Australia some day, but understand all too well just how far away you are. I'm sending smiles and cheers from across the pond.

      Reply
  7. Camille Gillham

    June 24, 2014 at 9:47 pm

    Ooooo- I just bought a new mold- so doing this one!

    Reply
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