Make easy heart shaped Valentine Rice Krispie treats with M&M's and sprinkles. Cute Valentine's Day snack that's perfect for kids, classroom, and a Valentine's Day party! Or make just because for a sweet heart shaped dessert filled with crispy chocolaty bites.
Classic Rice Krispie treats are an all time favorite dessert, loved by many, and they're so easy to reinvent for all your favorite holidays. I mean, how cute are heart shaped Rice Krispie treats, Christmas tree Rice Krispie treats, and snowman Rice Krispie treats?
Heart shaped Valentine's Rice Krispie treats are super easy to make, and just as cute too. Only they're perfect for Cupid's special holiday.
Why You're Going to Love This Recipe
- Valentine's Day Rice Krispie treats don't use a lot of ingredients. This easy recipe is very simple to make.
- Even though these delicious treats are very festive, you can decorate them with minimal effort. Mix in a bag of Valentine M&M's, sprinkle on a handful of heart shaped sprinkles, and you're pretty much set.
- Rice Krispie Valentine treats make the perfect treat for a classroom party, as well as a special after school snack or fun dessert for your sweethearts on Valentine's Day. They're the perfect way to say I love you.
Ingredients and Substitutions Notes
You'll need to gather just a few simple ingredients to make heart Rice Krispie treats…
- Salted Butter – Use real butter, not margarine. And use salted butter so you get that extra boost of flavor from the salt.
- Vanilla Extract – Most Rice Krispie treat recipes don't call for vanilla, but I really love the flavor it gives to these wonderfully chewy treats.
- Sea Salt – Don't leave this out; it really helps give a boost of flavor to these heart shaped Rice Krispie treats.
- Mini Marshmallows – You can use big marshmallows or marshmallow cream (though ingredient amounts differ), but mini marshmallows melt more quickly and efficiently.
- Rice Krispies cereal – You can use any brand of crisp rice cereal or Rice Krispie cereal you want; I prefer to use either Malt-O-Meal Crispy Rice or Millville (from Aldi) because they're gluten-free.
- Valentine M&M's – These colorful M&M's give an extra festive touch to your Valentine treats.
- Valentine Sprinkles – Feel free to use whatever sprinkles you can find, the tinier the better, because you don't want to take away from the flavor of your treats.
How to Make Valentine Rice Krispie Treats
First things first, you'll need to make the treats.
How to Make Rice Crispy Treats
- Melt butter in a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium-low heat.
- Then stir in the vanilla extract and salt.
- Add the mini marshmallows, and stir 'til they melt into a smooth, creamy mixture.
- Next begin to stir in the Rice Krispies cereal, partially stirring them in to your marshmallows.
- Now for the best part… Stir in the M&M's candies, and finish mixing everything together.
- Wet your hands with water; then spread the Rice Krispies cereal mixture into a greased 9×13 baking pan. (Note: Sometimes I’ll use a regular cake pan, but if I know I’m cutting out shapes, I’ll use my more shallow brownie pan. The brownie pan really allows me to get in with the cookie cutter and not have to fight with the sides of the pan. OR you can also go the route of sticking parchment paper or wax paper in your pan, grease it with non-stick cooking spray, and spread the mixture on top of the paper. That way when it comes time to cut out the heart shaped treats, you can just pull the whole thing, by the paper, out of the pan, then cut.)
- Be sure to add the sprinkles right away, so they'll stick to the warm marshmallow treats. If you wait too long, the sprinkles will just fall right off.
How to Shape Valentines Rice Krispie Treats
You can use cookie cutters to make any kind of shapes you want.
Once you’ve spread your Rice Krispies treats mixture in your pan or baking sheet, you can go ahead and start cutting out heart shapes with a heart-shaped cookie cutter. I recommend dipping it in water before cutting, so the treats will fall right off the cutter.
Be careful because the treats will still be quite hot, so just take your time.
Decorating and Flavor Alternatives for These Treats
There are many things you can do to decorate Rice Krispie hearts for Valentine's Day. First let's talk about decorating.
How to Decorate Rice Krispie Treats
- Skip adding M&M's to the mixture, and add M&M's Minis on top instead. You'd probably need to pipe on a little marshmallow fluff or melted candy melts and then sprinkle them on.
- Use a piping bag to pipe a thin zig zag of melted red, white, or pink candy melts or melted chocolate all over the top of your Rice Krispie treats, and add Valentine sprinkles.
- Instead of Valentine sprinkles, use pink Nerds. Kids LOVE Nerds.
- Add festive sprinkles right into the Rice Krispie squares recipe instead of sprinkling them on top.
- Make pops out of your Rice crispy treats by adding a lollipop stick into each of the treats.
- Dip a portion of or the whole treat into melted candy melts or melted chocolate, and sprinkle with sprinkles.
- Try different Valentine shape cookie cutters! Maybe X's and O's for hugs and kisses.
- Decorate your heart-shaped Rice Krispie treats with adorable little Cupid's arrows made out of toothpicks and gummy hearts.
Alternative Flavor and Color Options
- Make pink Rice Krispie treats by adding pink food coloring to the melted marshmallow mixture.
- Add enough strawberry Jello mix to your marshmallow mixture to give the treats both a strawberry flavor and a pink color, sorta like strawberry Rice Krispie treats.
- In addition to M&M's, add a handful of white chocolate chips into the crispy treat mixture.
As you can see, the options are endless with this sweet treat.
Expert Tips and Recipe FAQ's
Yes, you can totally make these ahead of time. Make them the day before, and you're all set for the party the next day. I wouldn't make them more than 1-2 days in advance, though, as they can grow stale over a couple of days.
There may be a couple of reasons your treats aren't chewy. First, your marshmallows and cereal may not have been fresh; be sure to use fresh marshmallows and non-stale cereal. It's also important to cook the marshmallow mixuture on low to medium heat, so the marshmallows slowly and evenly melt. Also, did you press hard when you pressed the finished mixture into the pan? It's important to lightly press them into the pan and don't overly compress them down. Lightly pressing them will help with keeping the treats soft and chewy, rather than hard and tough as nails.
You shouldn't have this problem if you follow this recipe to a t. But it could be that the recipe calls for too much butter. Too much butter will give an overly soft treat that doesn't compact together into a nice, uniform, crispy treat.
It's important to store your treats in an airtight container or sealed plastic bag. You'll probably want to eat them within the first 2 or 3 days.
Creative Valentine Gifting Ideas
If you want to use this recipe to make treats for a Valentine's Day party and you're gifting the treats to classmates or friends, here are just a few easy ideas for creative packaging and gifting.
- Use sandwich bags as treats bags. Or if you want something cuter…
- Go to Dollar Tree and get Valentine's Day treat bags for the Rice Krispie treats. Be sure to get enough bags for everyone on your list. This is one of my favorite places for cheap party supplies.
- While there, you can either buy Valentines…
- You can make Valentines…
- Or you can find loads of cute printable Valentines on Etsy, like this Crispy Rice Treat Valentine or this Friendship Treat Valentine.
- You can also make a homemade dinosaur Valentine box and print free dinosaur Valentines to pair with these heart shaped snacks.
More Valentine's Day Treats You'll Love:
If you want more Valentine treats, you'll love these heart shaped chocolate whoopie pies and Valentine snack cakes.
While these Ritz Cracker chocolate peanut butter cups are one of our favorite Christmas treats, they make an excellent Valentine's Day dessert too. Valentine marshmallow pops are another easy treat you can make in a jiffy.
Crazy Adventures in Parenting has a recipe for the cutest li'l Minions Valentine's Rice Krispies treats. Mom on Timeout shares how to make the cutest easy Valentine's Day patties.
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Heart Shaped Valentine Rice Krispie Treats
Ingredients
- 5 tablespoons salted butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 6 cups mini marshmallows
- 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal *
- 10 ounces Valentine M&M's
- 1/4 cup Valentine sprinkles
Instructions
- Grease a 9×13 baking pan with cooking spray.
- Melt the butter in a large sauce pan or Dutch oven over low to medium heat.
- Stir the vanilla extract and salt into the butter.
- Add the mini marshmallows to the melted butter mixture, stirring until the marshmallows have fully melted.
- Remove the mixture from the heat, and partially stir into the Rice Krispies cereal.
- Once you’ve partially mixed together the melted marshmallows with the Rice Krispies cereal, stir in the Valentine's M&M’s candies and finish mixing everything together.
- Spread the Rice Krispies treats mixture into a pan.
- Immediately sprinkle on Valentine sprinkles, so they'll stick to the warm marshmallow treats.
- Cut heart shaped Rice Krispie treats with a regular or mini size heart shaped cookie cutter. Work your way around the edge, then in toward the middle.
- And that's it. Your chocolate filled Valentines treats are ready to serve and enjoy!
I made these yesterday exactly as written, including the 10 oz bag valentine plain m&m, although I used a 16 oz bag mini marshmallows rather than the standard 10 oz. Love the extra marshmallow!! More is better! I have made ka-jillions of cereal treats for decades with every variation imaginable. These are by far the BEST! The m&m addition takes it next level with just enough ooey gooey chocolate. And don’t skip the vanilla. It is a lovely noticable addition. A simple to make recipe made even better!! Will make for all holidays, using various holiday m&ms.
Thank you so much for the awesome feedback, Brenda! That sounds delicious, and I am so glad that you enjoyed the recipe.