Shamrock Rice Crispy Treats: St Patricks Day Sweets
March is upon us and St Patricks Day sweets magically appear everywhere bringing
two of my favorite flavors to life: mint and chocolate and do I have a new treat that will make your taste buds feel "lucky" you discovered this on the internet: Shamrock Rice Crispy Treats are amazing! These chocolate covered rice crispy treats make great candy gifts or party favors. They are bursting with flavor and look fabulous. I cover them in different kinds of chocolate milk, dark and white and decorate them with different toppings like crushed chocolate cookies, hard shelled candies and colored sugar crystals. You can even add extra flavor by blending candies into the rice crispy cereal mix and one secret ingredient. If you've seen my other treats from Christmas and Valentines Day then you'll like these the most. I've even adorned them with St Patricks Day drawings like smoking pipes, 4 leaf clovers, pots of gold, the number 17 and more.
So how do you make Shamrock Rice Crispy Treats? How do you shape and decorate them? How do you cover and decorate them in chocolate?
Creation Overview
The process is very similar to making decorated sugar cookies. Warning: it does take some time to decorate them. So please allow enough time to complete the task. A time saving secret though is to decorate one batch all the same way. The ways to decorate them is endless and you can create a phenomenal assortment of awesome looking, eye popping Shamrock rice treats (or other shapes for that matter, cauldrons, pipes, leprechauns, etc), but any one design will be more than good enough. If you have the time you can make one big batch and separate them into different decoration groups.
I don't have enough space here to explain the entire process but you start with a rice crispy treats recipe, press the cereal mixture into a baking sheet and "cut out" the shapes with a cookie cutter. Specialized cookie cutters like St Patricks Day shapes you may have to buy online or find at a good baking supply store. You can get everything you need if you have one in your area so just do a search and perhaps look for reviews of different stores. Melt the chocolate in a microwave at a low power level or use a double boiler. For this project I prefer the microwave. Apply it with a rubber spatula, but this is limiting so I fill plastic sauce bottles with the chocolate. Use green colored white chocolate coating wafers to decorate for the holiday. Buy many bottles, do NOT wash and reuse them, it will take forever. You can find sauce bottles with caps at a craft or baking supply store. Use a separate bottle for different shades of green and different colors like yellow or milk chocolate or dark chocolate for brown.
A Few Decorating Technique Ideas
You can keep the chocolate warm and melted by placing the bottle in a glass filled one third the way of warm water. Refill the glass with new warm water as it cools. Use the bottles to "draw or paint" the chocolate onto the treats. Any toppings such as mini chocolate chips or colored sugar crystals place onto melted chocolate immediately before the chocolate starts to set (harden). Create borders with a different color of melted chocolate or shade or line the border with toppings. You can also add more flavor by adding crushed cookies to the melted chocolate. Do this on either the top or bottom of the treat. Draw shapes with the bottles like pipes, clovers or the number 17 on top of the treat once the first layer of chocolate sets.
Adding Extra Flavor
For those that like an extra kick of flavor, like myself, you can stir in hard shelled candies, crushed hard mint candies, gummies or whichever candy you prefer, be creative. But one ingredient I like to use to take my treats "to another level" are candy flavoring oils or extracts. Any good local baking supply store will carry them or sometimes craft stores do. Of course you can always buy them online through different retailers. Just do a search for candy flavorings. For this occasion just use mint flavoring.
Work Station
The key to success is set up your work station properly so all the decorating supplies are on hand. An extra plug-in burner is useful to keep a pot of warm water near you. Draw on paper how you want your batch of treats to look, or at least know in your mind, before you begin how you'd like them to look. This is important when working with chocolate since it sets fast so have some type of plan before starting. Have two baking sheets or plates on the table. One for the partially finished treats, when adding one layer of chocolate at a time and the other for the finished treats.
For example,let's say you choose to keep it simple and you choose to decorate your Shamrock Rice Crispy Treats with a light green surface of chocolate and green sugar crystals sprinkled on top with a dark green chocolate border. Have a saucer in front of you for a decorating plate, the sprinkles in a dish and a sauce bottle for each green, perhaps two for the surface chocolate since you will need more of it, in the pot of warm water.
Decorating Sequence
In this example work with one treat at a time. Add the surface chocolate then immediately sprinkle on the sugar crystals before the chocolate sets. Move onto the next treat repeating the same process until you have finished all of them. Come back and add the borders to each one until finished. This is just one way to decorate. For another style the order or even perhaps the sequence would change. Let's say you weren't adding toppings or sugar crystals, just covering your treats with chocolate and adding chocolate details. Then you could add the surface chocolate to all of your Shamrock Rice Crispy Treats first one by one, then come back to add the borders and drawings once the surface chocolate set.
Packaging
The simplest and most hygenic way is to place your rice crispy treats into individual cellophane bags that you can buy at any baking or craft store (again, they would have everything you would need). Tie off with ribbons, add stickers if you'd like, use your imagination. You can then place the treats in paper gift bags or small gift boxes. Add a small gift tag or if for party favors just leave them in the cellophane bags.
Impress your friends or party guests. Try out this cool project!
Happy St Patricks Day!
Copyright (c) 2012 Deluxe Sweets and Candy Gifts
by: Rick Quatraro
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