Cocoa Krispies Treats
Updated September 15, 2025

- Ready In
- 50 min
- Rating
- Comments
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Ingredients
½ cup/113 grams salted butter, plus more for greasing
½ cup/56 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 1 teaspoon fine salt
1 (12-ounce/340-gram) bag marshmallows
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 cups/180 grams Rice Krispies, or other crisp rice cereal
Preparation
- Step 1
Butter a 9-inch square baking pan.
- Step 2
In a large pot, melt the ½ cup butter over medium heat. Cook, stirring often with a rubber spatula, until the milk solids on the bottom of the pan turn golden brown, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the cocoa powder and salt until incorporated.
- Step 3
Add the marshmallows and stir until they are about 80 percent melted. Some lumps are OK. Remove the pot from the heat, add the vanilla and cereal and stir the mixture until all the cereal is coated.
- Step 4
Transfer to the prepared pan. Use the spatula to gently spread the mixture out evenly but avoid packing it down. Let cool completely.
- Step 5
Remove from the pan and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into 9 even squares. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Private Notes
Comments
I struggled for about 10 minutes trying to understand why your mum would serve you cardboard cereal box bottoms! ;-)
My mum used to exalt this recipe by taking the bottom of the boxes of raisin bran, cheerios, wheaties and everything else we 60s kids grew up with and marshmallowing them together...but she didn't stop there. She'd spread some peanut butter on the top, let it cool, and melt a bunch of dark chocolate chips to spread over that. The result was a chewy, sweet peanut-buttery chocolate cereal-y delight that never lasted more than a day.
or you could just make regular rice krispie treats with cocoa krispies!
Way too salty! And I like salt… cut it to a 1/2 tsp or just leave it out! I used diamond crystal kosher salt as the recipe stated.
A little too salty to my taste. I would reduce salt to 3/4 tsp next time.
I really wanted to love these, but I used unsalted butter and they still tasted way too salty. I’d halve the salt and would not use kosher—it popped out against the other flavors and not in a good way.
