Rice krispie treats are one of my best desserts. If I’m not really feeling the original rice krispie treats from Kellogg’s, I just go online and search for more interesting recipes. Basically, rice krispie treats are made from the original Kellogg’s rice krispie cereal, marshmallow, and butter. However, you’re free to combine different sweet treats like Oreos, candy, vanilla extract, chocolate chip cookies, and lots more to make your rice krispie treats.
To save time, you may decide to make a large batch of rice krispie treats that you can eat whenever you want to. You may have also bought more than you can eat at once and you have some leftovers. If you’re in either of these situations, or any other situation that leaves you with excess rice krispie treats, you’ll need to preserve the RKTs.
So, is freezing a good option? Can you freeze rice krispie treats? Yes, you can actually freeze rice krispie treats. Even though the rice krispie treat recipe contains melted marshmallows, it doesn’t affect the freezing process. It also doesn’t matter if you’ve made the rice krispie treats from scratch at home or you bought them at the store, they’ll still freeze pretty well.
That’s great news, is it not? With this information, you can confidently make your large batch of rice krispie treats for consumption on a later date. However, you should know that it’s important to use the best quality ingredients if you’re making the rice krispie treats yourself. This is because low-grade ingredients will shorten the shelf life of your homemade rice krispie treats – the RKTs will just end up being soggy after they’ve been frozen and thawed.
Now, we can proceed to discuss the details of freezing rice krispie treats; keep reading to know more.
Freezing Rice Krispie Treats
Not only is making rice krispie treats easy, but freezing it is also quite simple. If you freeze them properly, rice krispie treats will last for up to 6 months. However, you shouldn’t leave the RKTs in the freezer beyond that time.
If left to sit at room temperature, the rice krispie treats would only be good for about 2 days. Since butter is one of the major ingredients used in the preparation of the RKTs, they’ll go bad once the butter starts turning rancid at room temperature – you may use salted butter if you want to reduce the risk of it going rancid.
Refrigeration is also a method of preserving rice krispie treats, but if you want them to last much longer you’ll have to store them in the freezer.
How to Freeze Rice Krispie Treats
To harness the full 6 months of preservation that freezing offers for RKTs, you need to follow a few easy steps. I’d like to make things much easier for you by separately discussing steps on how to freeze homemade rice krispie treats and how to freeze store-bought rice krispie treats.
How to Freeze Homemade Rice Krispie Treats
Here are some simple steps for freezing homemade RKTs:
- After making the fresh rice krispie treat, you’ll need to allow it to cool down. This is because freezing hot food is a bad idea.
- Next, grab a knife and cut the rice krispie sheet into smaller bars. Doing this saves storage space in the freezer and also prevents wastage; you can take only the number of frozen bars that you’d be able to finish at once.
- Proceed to wrap all the individual RKT bars in plastic wrap. You can do the wrapping in one or two layers.
- Take all the wrapped RKT bars and put them in a resealable freezer-safe bag. Before you seal the freezer-safe bag make sure you remove as much air as you can from inside the bag.
- Before finally placing the rice krispie treats in the freezer, write the current date on the plastic bag with a marker.
You can actually pre-freeze the RKT bars first before packing them up for final storage in the freezer.
How to Freeze Store-Bought Rice Krispie Treats
If you’ve purchased ready-made rice krispie treats, like Kellogg’s original, from the store, you should follow these steps to freeze the leftovers.
- First off, you can actually take the whole original packaging of the store-bought RKTs and put them in the freezer for long-term preservation. However, if you’d prefer to store it in bits, here’s what to do:
- Take the rice krispie treats out of the original packaging and plastic wrap each piece separately.
- Once the pieces are properly wrapped, you can transfer them into a resealable freezer-safe bag.
- Make sure you let out as much air as possible from the freezer-safe bag before finally sealing it.
- Label the freezer-safe bag with the current date so that you’ll always know exactly how long the RKTs have been frozen for.
How to Thaw Frozen Rice Krispie Treats
Remember to eat your rice krispie treats within the recommended 6 months of freezing. If the RKTs are kept frozen longer than 6 months, you should just toss them in the trash – the rice krispie treats would have lost most of their original taste and texture by then.
Defrosting frozen RKTs isn’t a big deal. Simply remove them from inside the freezer and let them sit on the countertop for about 60 minutes. After the RKTs are completely defrosted you can go ahead to eat them. Make sure you don’t refreeze again after thawing the RKTs – this would lead to a serious loss of consistency and taste.
Conclusion
Rice krispie treats, whether homemade or store-bought, are pretty delicious desserts. Now that we’ve established that freezing can preserve RKTs for up to 6 months, feel free to make your RKTs in large batches. However, you shouldn’t bother eating them if they’ve been frozen beyond 6 months.
When thawing your frozen rice krispie treats, they may still feel a bit too hard. If that’s the case, you can simply put the RKTs in your microwave and heat them up a bit – be careful not to burn your dessert!