Raw Meat Rice Krispies

October 31: Halloween

Life is busy but we always try to enjoy the festivities around one of our favorite and fun holidays—Halloween. In between the cake club and culinary book club meetings with Halloween potluck themes, and the trunk-or-treat and fall harvest socials at church, we just do not have a lot of time to prepare something elaborate but still want to impress friends and family with creative and creepy cuisine.

So when we saw the Instructables tutorial for Raw Meat Rice Krispies, we just had to make this quick and easy dessert for Halloween. There are other tutorials that called for a few tablespoons of red velvet cake mix but we did not want to buy a whole box of it. The Instructables tutorial added peanut butter and decorated the foam package with fake edible blood. We kept it simple—again for time’s sake as well as less gore for the kiddos—and just stuck with a basic Rice Krispies recipe and colored the melted marshmallows in red and blue food coloring to give it a fresh “raw meat” hue.

Try this fun, festive and freaky food for a terrific timesaving treat for Halloween!

Recipe
Adapted from Instructables

Ingredients

• ¼ cup (½ stick) butter
• 1 package (10 ounces) or 5 cups regular marshmallows (or 4 cups miniature marshmallows)
• 6 cups rice cereal (Rice Krispies— gluten-free also available)
• Few drops of red food color
• Fewer drops of blue food color

Directions

In a large pan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Add a few drops of red food color then a few drops of blue food color. Mix and continue to add red and blue food colors until the desired shade of “raw meat” is achieved. Make the color slightly darker because it will become a little lighter when the cereal is mixed in. Remove from heat.

Mix in the cereal until combined well. Spread cereal mixture onto a lightly buttered sheet of waxed paper. With buttered hands, free form the cereal mixture into “raw meat”. For patties, form cereal mixture into balls then flatten to ½ inch thick. 

Place “raw meat” or patties onto foam trays. Wrap package tightly with clear plastic wrap. Print sales labels and stick onto package. Display at the Halloween table or give for Halloween gifts.

Notes

• Save the real raw meat foam trays from the store and wash and dry thoroughly before re-using them for this recipe to avoid cross contamination. We found white foam trays in a pack at the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores.
• To decorate with optional “blood”, use red gel icing and squirt randomly on the foam trays before placing the “raw meat” and patties. 
• Samples of the sales labels for the meat package can be found on the Instructables tutorial webpage. Or search for other online designs and modify them for your own purposes.
• Search our blog for more Halloween recipes under the Theme Menus tab.