4.34 from 18 votes

Rice Krispie Cookies

Name: Rice Krispie Cookies
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 13 min
Total time: 23 min
Ingredients: 1 cup unsalted butter (softened); 1 cup light brown sugar (firmly packed); ½ cup granulated sugar; 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk (room temperature preferred); 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract; 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 cups rice krispie cereal; 1 ½ cups mini marshmallows

By Sam MerrittPublished Feb 06, 2025

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55 Comments

Servings: 19 servings

23 mins

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The perfect mishmash of crispy and chewy with shattery cereal bits and melty, gooey marshmallow, my Rice Krispie cookies are unique and obsession-worthy. They have an incredible texture that makes it impossible to eat just one, and there’s no chilling required meaning you can have them ready to go in under 30 minutes! Recipe includes a how-to video!

Rice krispie cookies surrounded by mini marshmallows and cereal pieces.

Rice Krispie Treat Cookies

Something a bit different today! My rice krispie treat cookies combine super chewy cookies with gobs of mini marshmallows and pebbly bits of crunchy cereal. They taste just like rice krispie treats, but in cookie form!

What’s to Love about This Recipe

Nostalgic and so fun! These truly tastes like a rice krispie treats, and my kids loves them just as much as I do.
Amazing flavor. With buttery, vanilla notes, sweet marshmallow, crisped rice cereal… it’s like a gourmet rice krispie treat in cookie form.
Equally amazing texture–chewy with pockets of gooey marshmallow and crisp cereal pieces. I just love them!
Easy to make with no chilling required. If no-chill cookies are your thing, also try my butterfinger cookies or double chocolate chunk cookies.
A fun way to use up cereal in your pantry. I’m a big fan of using cereal in desserts (we prefer scrambled eggs for breakfast), and you’ll know that if you’ve tried my fruity pebbles macarons or puppy chow. If your kids are tired of rice krispie cereal, here’s a fun way to put it to use.

One thing I should note about these cookies: they are messy. The marshmallow will inevitably melt out all over the baking sheet, and while I include tips in the recipe to tidy this up, it’s honestly not a big deal! I think it adds to their charm 😊

What You Need

Overhead view of ingredients including rice krispies cereal, brown sugar, flour, and more.

Rice Krispies cereal. We’ll use just 2 cups for this recipe. A 12 oz box typically has 10-12 cups of cereal, so you will have plenty leftover for snacking (or for making a batch of my peanut butter rice krispie treats or scotcharoos).
Sugar. We’ll use a combination of mostly light brown sugar and just a bit of granulated sugar for a richer flavor and softer texture.
Egg + egg yolk. An extra egg yolk enriches the dough and encourages a tender, chewy texture. If you’d like to use your leftover egg white instead of discarding it, make a batch of my candied almonds or candied pecans!
Mini marshmallows. You will need 1 ½ cups, which is typically about ⅓ of the usual 10oz bag. You can put the remainder towards my ambrosia salad recipe!
Vanilla. A hefty pour of vanilla rounds out the flavor of these cookies in such a nice way. I use vanilla in my rice krispie treat recipes too, so this was a non-negotiable for me when developing this recipe.

SAM’S TIP: If you’d like, you can add a cup or so of chocolate chips with the marshmallows and cereal. I originally was going to make this a rice krispie chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I found the chocolate chips to be a little bit overpowering, and, my taste testers and I much preferred this recipe without chocolate chips in it. But you can certainly add them if you like! I think milk chocolate chips actually work better than semisweet in this particular cookie.

This is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!

How to Make Rice Krispie Cookies

Overhead view of a bowl of cookie dough made with rice krispies cereal and marshmallows.

Make the dough

The dough comes together quickly and easily. Rather than using melted butter, we use softened here and cream it with the sugars. You will want to use an electric mixer (or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment!) and cream the butter and sugar well, until it’s light and fluffy and well-combined.

You’ll whisk the dry ingredients separately before stirring into the wet ingredients, then I add the cereal and mini marshmallows last. I prefer to fold these last two ingredients into the dough by hand; using a mixer will break up the cereal to be a bit finer than I prefer so a gentler hand works well here.

Spoons rounding rice krispie cookies after baking.

Bake the cookies

I like my cookies a bit on the larger side, so I use 3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie. Because I can be a bit of a perfectionist, I also like to roll the dough between my palms to make the cookie dough uniform before baking. Just like when making my s’mores cookies, it helps to try to conceal the marshmallows to help prevent them from leaking out, but you’re not going to have a 100% success rate with this no matter how hard you try (and that’s OK — more on this in a bit!).

Bake the cookies until you notice the edges turning a light golden brown (any marshmallow that leaks out will turn golden before the edge of the cookie, note that you’re looking for the edge of the cookie to be golden).

Some of the marshmallow will likely ooze out of the cookies in the oven. This is messy but fine, but if you’re a bit of a perfectionist, too, use a spoon to nudge it back into each cookie after baking.

SAM’S TIP: If your cookies are spreading a bit thinner than you’d like, your ingredients may have just been a tad too warm. To fix this, you can chill your dough in the fridge (I recommend 30 minutes or so) before making your next batch. This will help them retain their shape!

Stack of four rice krispie cookies with the top cookie missing a bite.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did my marshmallows leak out?

Unfortunately that is just the nature of this recipe! Unless you contain each marshmallow perfectly in dough, there really is no avoiding it. Personally, it doesn’t bother me, and if you nudge the marshmallow back into the cookies after they come out of the oven (using a spoon, the marshmallow will be hot!), it’s not really an issue.

Can I use this recipe with a different cereal?

I haven’t tested it, but I suspect any of the rice krispie varieties would work here, just note that the flavored/coated kind will likely be much sweeter.

If you want to make cookies with Fruity Pebbles, try my Fruity Pebbles cookies!

Can I make this recipe gluten free?

As written, my recipe is not gluten free; however, I suspect a 1:1 gluten free flour will work just fine in this recipe. Just make sure the cereal you are using is labeled gluten free as well!

If you do try this, please let me know how it goes for you.