As Mr. Fantabulous would say I “just can’t let a great thing alone”. He usually says this when I take a classic recipe (that he loves – in this case classic Rice Krispie Treats) and put my own spin on them. Truth be told, I’m not a fan of the regular ones as they are just too sweet for me. Plus I’m sorry they are a PITA to make. Granted it’s a great bicep workout mixing up the melted marshmallows and cereal but dear Lord I shouldn’t break out into a sweat mixing up food! LOL So since it’s Everything Pumpkin Season now, I wanted to give apple it’s fair treatment in the spotlight. If given the choice I’d go for apple over pumpkin every time. Don’t get me wrong, I love pumpkin but after a while it gets to be too much. I guess that’s how it is with most things – if you have it all the time eventually you’ll get sick of it.

Wait… no, that can never happen with bacon or pizza. Ever! I. Would. Die. PERIOD!

While I was under quarantine, we had some amazing friends (Brandon and Amy) stop over and help Mr. Fantabulous do yard work. Even though I begged to go out and help (I suited up, covered myself from head to toe and had my mask on) the warden refused to let me out of the house. So the very least I could do since they were working on my yard (trust me folks, it’s a very, VERY hard thing for me to ask for help or more so let others help me out) I would make lunch. So in the oven went my Tomato & Zucchini tart, Italian Rockets were baking away and drinks were chilling. The only thing I didn’t have was dessert. By the time I had made the other things my energy was pretty much wiped out. I spied my box of rice krispies and decided to go with simple.

I made the first batch for Mr. Plain-Jane-Can’t-Stray-From-Tradition Fantabulous (tee hee) and realized I wanted to make another flavor. I had a ton of fresh apples on my counter and thought about putting them in this but realized fresh apples in this would make it soggy. Now if I had dried apples that would totally rock – next time!

Since I didn’t have any dried apples I had to go with spices to mimic the flavors of apples. Apple Pie Spice is awesome. All it is is a mixture of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, ginger and cardamon. You can put cloves in it if you want but cloves is a mood-dependent thing for me. I’ll share the recipe very soon. I need to make more and take some photos of it. Anyway as I got my stuff out to make this batch I was strictly going to with just apple pie rice krispie bars but I’m sorry there’s just something magical about adding caramel to apple pie. Same thing with cheddar cheese but that’s in another post.

If you wanted you can most certainly omit the caramel but why? It’s AWESOME!

With me I always, always have homemade caramel made up in my fridge. Sometimes I’ll add just a teaspoon of it to my tea instead of creamer and sugar. It gives it a more ‘warm’ flavor. So in the pot with the melted butter and melting marshmallows the caramel sauce went. Folks the smell from that pot was beyond EPIC! It took every ounce of control I had not to stick my finger into the BUBBLING HOT mixture and eat some. But yeah, I did that once and ended up with some nasty burns. I’m a genius (no for real) but common sense eludes me at times. It’s a good thing I’m so damn pretty <insert excessive batting of the baby blues>!

Mixing this up, yeah… still a PITA as it was thick and sticky and it looked so friggen cool as there was a bajillion (and 7) strands of caramel marshmallow awesomeness everywhere! Once these set (which is one of the best things about making these as it hardly takes any time to set) I cut off a small sliver and gave it a try. Seriously they tasted like caramel apple pie! The caramel inside mellowed out the sweetness of the marshmallows. Because I couldn’t let well enough alone I drizzled some extra caramel sauce on top to make them more “pretty”. Plus it was another excuse to use more caramel.

Since the tart and hoagies were done, plus dessert I had an excuse to go outside to tell them lunch was ready. And of course my warden yelled at me for being outside but then immediately smiled when he heard “FOOD!” I set the food out, put my mask on and heard the “Mmmm’s” coming from them all which meant the lunch was good. Once they were done and went back outside I went to clean up. They went to town on both trays of dessert though Mr. Fantabulous swears he only ate ‘his’ tray though the man had caramel sauce on his shirt. LOL

If you’re looking to change up the classic recipe, give this one a try!

Caramel Apple Rice Crispy Treats

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Author: The Kitchen Whisperer

Ingredients

6 cups rice crispy cereal (regular or gluten free(
10 ounce bag of marshmallows (about 40 large ones)
4 tablespoon butter, unsalted
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups homemade Caramel Sauce (not ice cream topping)
1 1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice

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Instructions

Lightly spray a 9×13” glass pan.
In a large pan melt the butter over low heat.
Once melted add in the marshmallows and 1 1/2 cups caramel sauce.
Stir until completely melted.
While the mixture is melting pour the cereal into a large mixing bowl; set aside.
Once the marshmallows are melted, remove from heat and add in the salt and apple pie spice stirring just to combine.
Pour the hot mixture over top of the cereal.
Using a heavy duty spoon mix well (use your muscles!)
Empty the mixture into the pan and using a greased spatula press the mixture into the pan making it compact and even.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Once cooled add heat up the remaining 1/2 cup caramel sauce and drizzle over top.
Cut and serve.