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| Our beautiful leaning house |
I have made gingerbread houses before and they were not the most architecturally sound buildings. I did enjoy decorating them. Honestly, I was not crazy about making the gingerbread. It was time consuming and well, tedious. So this year I decided to make them out of crisp rice cereal. Yep! That yummy gooey marshmallowy treat. I made
candy sushi out them; why not a house? The result was a quick-to-make but still not architecturally sound house. Making the house was easy and decorating was so so much fun. I am surprised it did not collapse under all the weight of icing and candy.
Crisp Rice Cereal House
6 Tbsp of Butter, Divided
8 Cups (20 oz.) (567 g) of Miniature Marshmallows, Divided
12 Cups (1200 g) of Crisp Rice Cereal
Frosting
Assorted Candy
Butter or grease a 13 x 9 inch (33 x 23 cm) pan. Measure a 15 x 10 inch (38 x 25 cm) piece of foil, grease the foil, and place on a large cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to 250F/120C/ Gas Mark 1/2.
Over low heat melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan. Once the butter is melted, increase the heat to medium, and add half of marshmallows (4 cups/284 g).
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| Stirring the marshmallows |
Stir until completed melted. Remove from heat and add half of the cereal (6 cups/ 600 g). Stir until the cereal is completely combined. Dump into 13 x 9 (33 x 23 cm) pan. Butter your hands (trust me- a light coating a butter is a necessity) or a buttered spatula and spread until level.
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| This will be the base |
Clean your saucepan and repeat. Spread onto foil.
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| We will make the house out of this block |
Carefully cut the cereal mixture on the foil into the following pieces: four 5 by 3.5 inches (13 x 9 cm) (the sides) and two 8 x 3 inches (20 x 8 cm) (the roof). Take two of the side pieces and cut off the two corners to form a peak. To make the process easier, I made a pattern out of paper and used them as a template.
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| The baked pieces. The two small pieces were going to be a chimney |
There will be pieces left over you can use these to make chimney and trees. I ate them. Once the pieces are cut out, place on a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 20 minutes. Reshape the pieces as needed and cool.
To Assemble
Place the large base on a cookie sheet. (I covered it with sweetened grated coconut).
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| The base covered in coconut |
Pipe a line of frosting where you are going to place the sides. Generously frost the sides and fit the house together.
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| Putting the house together requires a lot of frosting |
Next frost the edges and place the roof.
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| Ready to add the roof |
Add frosting to patch the holes.
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| Obviously, we had lots of holes |
Finally decorate.
The bottom line: will we do this again? Yes- I think this has replaced the gingerbread house. I hope to have a better constructed house next year.
