Cheetos Krispy Treats: A vintage recipe horror ahead of its time

Brand cookbooks have been around for over 100 years. Are they getting better...or worse?

A monument to Big Corn.

Brand cookbooks are an age-old marketing trick to get us to buy more of what they’re selling. Jell-O and Campbell’s have been the worst offenders, but all of the baking ingredient, canned vegetable, and condiment companies are guilty, too.

Sometimes they take themselves a bit too seriously, and other times it seems like they don’t take things seriously enough. This 80s Chex Rueben Salad? Lettuce, Thousand Island dressing, Wheat Chex, and corned beef…They’re practically laughing at us.

This brings us to today’s gustatory perp walk: Cheetos Puffs Marshmallow Treats. They’re exactly like Rice Krispies Treats, marshmallow and all, plus real cheese and extruded corn flour. If I’m not back in an hour, call out a search team.

Why would I make this? When I made the Heinz Red Magic Rosy Apple Pie, my husband was convinced that I was the first person to make it, that the ketchup-based recipes in that brand cookbook were kitsch only, and that no one, not even the recipe developers, had ever made it.

Is this the world’s one and only ketchup apple pie? Not if you make it, too.

I do think Cheetos’…culinary?…staff made these recipes when creating them, but it might be true that they’re not really designed for wide use. They’re funny, potentially viral, and maybe a bit aspirational. Perhaps people buy a bag thinking it’d be funny to make the meatballs, and then they just eat the puffs and make regular meatballs. Win-win.

Well, I’m here to call their bluff. I’m making these.

I chose the preservative- and artificial additive-free Simply Puffs for this exercise in excess because I think it’s funnier, but if you want unholy orange, the regular Puffs are an equally solid choice. I made just a fraction of the recipe — 1 2/3 cups of mini mallows, 1 T plus 1 tsp butter, and 2 cups of Puffs makes 2 big squares. I left out the vanilla, too, because I don’t think those flavors will marry well.

It’s very similar to the original recipe everyone is familiar with — just melt marshmallows and butter together and stir in cereal, but it was really hard to get the puffs coated properly, and I ultimately broke quite a few of them. I actually think that ended up being helpful for packing into the pan neatly.

It’s hard to cut them cleanly — they shatter like an Arrakis chrysknife in the face of Maud’Dib. And then, as their inner cut edges are exposed to air, they go staler than a Harkonnen promise in less time than it takes a sandworm to eat a spice crawler.

For those five minutes, though, they’re sweetly, saltily delicious, crunchy and chewy all in one bite. Leaving out the vanilla was a good call, although I think regular Cheetos as opposed to the Puffs would have worked better and required less staleness-inducing breakage. There’s a little more tang than most people’s other cheese+sugar frame of reference, cheesecake, but it’s in the neighborhood. Pretty hilarious for a potluck or dinner party — just don’t cut them until just before you serve them, lest everyone accuse you of serving literal packing peanuts.

Here’s what I like about this recipe: it might open your mind to what other kinds of marshmallow treats you could make. Over the years, I’ve made them with Golden Grahams, Wheat Chex, Magic Spoon, Kix, granola, and Raisin Bran. I’ve added nuts and dried cranberries, ground flax and whole chia. They’re often not pretty, and sometimes you’ll find that you need to crush the cereal a bit to get good coverage just as I did with the Cheetos.

Using chia seeds? It’ll either be important to let ‘em see the package and help stir, or tell ‘em they’re spider eggs, depending on the kid.

The cereal to marshmallow ratio varies depending on the surface area, so be ready to start with less and then add more than is called for in the recipe.

Are they healthy? No.

Are they healthier than the original krispy treats? Yes. More fiber, more protein, maybe a hint of vitamins. They’re delicious, too. If you tend to center on Captain Crunch but would like to ease into more nutrient-dense cereals, this could be a great way to give it a shot. You could mix in half Cheerios in with Froot Loops treats, or maybe add a little ground flax to the regular Krispies — gram for gram, that would make them roughly nutritionally equivalent to Quaker Chewy granola bars. And if you worked up to using only a lower sugar, higher fiber, short ingredient list cereal like one from Nature’s Path or Kind Cereal, or even Premier Protein or Magic Spoon depending on your personal needs? Sure, I’d rather you eat those without adding sugar, but that would be better than a lot of supposedly healthy granola bars, and maybe it would be a step on the way to eating those great whole grain options with less marshmallow.

I feel the same way about the Cheetos end of this recipe, too. Although this particular krispy treat recipe is novelty only in my opinion, if it helps you enjoy a little bit of salad if you crumble some Flamin’ Hots on top, or if the kids look forward to taco night instead of takeout if there’s a little bowl of Doritos crumbs along with the shredded Romaine, I’m enthusiastically on board.

RD’s note: There are lots of people who can’t do much added sugar even if it’s a little bit better than some other choices, so if you’re one of those people, be honest with yourself, and maybe talk to a registered dietitian about things you can have that might help meet those cravings with love. No ad deals with any of the brands mentioned here!

Did you miss last week’s unhinged Pepper Cannon review? It was a wild ride, even for me, and a lot of people told me it made them laugh. If you could use a little of that, click the link here, and buckle up!