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This Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow is a no bake dessert recipe that makes a cute, festive treat for Valentine’s Day. This easy puppy chow is perfect for sharing with family and friends!
Looking for more puppy chow recipe ideas? Try my Caramel Apple Puppy Chow or this Banana Pudding Puppy Chow!
This Is One Of Our Favorite Puppy Chow Recipes
Puppy chow is an awesome, classic treat. You may have also heard it referred to as Muddy Buddies. The classic version is coated in chocolate, peanut butter and powdered sugar and is quite delicious.
This version of puppy chow is a twist on the classic that’s perfect for Valentine’s Day, or even a baby shower. Swap out the classic chocolate and peanut butter and instead use white and pink candy coating with powdered sugar and strawberry cake mix. The flavor is a delicious and fruity twist!
I am so in love with this puppy chow. It tastes awesome, is SO addicting and I love the pink and white colors! It’s also easy to make, package and snack on, so it’s great for gift giving. Does it get any better?
What You’ll Need
With only 6 ingredients, it’s easy to gather everything you need for this puppy chow. You should be able to find everything at a grocery store, Walmart or Target.
- Rice Chex Cereal: Rice chex is great because it’s unsweetened and doesn’t have a strong flavor that’ll interfere with the flavors in the puppy chow. As a bonus, it’s also gluten free!
- Melting chocolate: You need white and either pink or red (I used pink). There are various brands out there. Wilton candy melts are a popular one. You could also use Ghirardelli white chocolate melting wafers and color some of them with gel icing color to get pink or red.
- Powdered sugar: For covering the white chex.
- Strawberry cake mix: For covering the pink or red chex. This will need to be heat treated.
- M&Ms: I use red, pink and white M&Ms, but feel free to add other candy with similar colors.
How and Why to Heat Treat Cake Mix
Technically flour is a raw food, which means cake flour is raw until baked. Since it’s raw, it can contain germs that cause food poisoning, such as E.coli. The CDC actually investigated incidents related to raw flour and cake mix starting back in 2016. While you don’t normally have to worry about it because most things using flour are baked, this recipe uses cake mix. So heat treating our cake mix is needed to avoid any issues.
You can heat treat your cake mix either in the microwave or in the oven. If using the microwave, put the cake mix in a microwave-safe bowl and heat in 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until the cake mix reaches 160 degrees F throughout. If using your oven, spread your cake mix evenly on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees F, stirring every couple of minutes, until it reaches 160 degrees F. Let your cake mix cool and sift it before using, if it becomes clumpy.
How To Make Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow
Add Melted White Chocolate: Divide the rice chex cereal evenly between two bowls. Add the melted white chocolate to one bowl of the chex cereal and gently stir to coat evenly. Be careful to not break the chex cereal too much.
Coat In Powdered Sugar: Add the powdered sugar to the white chocolate covered chex cereal and gently stir to coat evenly with powdered sugar.
Add Melted Pink Chocolate and Cake Mix: Repeat the same process with the other half of the chex cereal, red/pink melting chocolate and strawberry cake mix (instead of the powdered sugar).
Cool and Combine: Allow both mixtures to dry completely and then combine the two kinds of puppy chow together and add the M&Ms.
Perfect Valentine’s Day Treat
This strawberries and cream puppy chow is so tasty and festive! The colors are great for Valentine’s Day and it’s snack-ability makes it the perfect gift. Plus, it’s a nice change from candy that doesn’t require a lot of work or using your oven. Package it in a cute box or jar with some ribbon around it and you’re all set. You could even attach the recipe so that they can make it again one day.
More Great Valentine’s Day Recipes
- Valentine’s Day Fudge
- Conversation Heart Cupcakes
- Chocolate Covered Strawberries
- Love Bug Oreo Balls
NOTE: This is not for dog consumption.
Print
Valentine’s Day Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 2 minutes
- Total Time: 30 mins
- Yield: About 6 Servings
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Microwave
- Cuisine: American
Description
Valentine’s Day Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow is a no bake dessert recipe that makes a cute & festive treat for Valentine’s Day. This easy puppy chow is perfect for sharing with family and friends!
Ingredients
- 5 cups rice chex cereal, divided
- 5 oz white melting chocolate
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 5 oz red or pink melting chocolate
- 1/2 cup strawberry cake mix, toasted
- 1 cup white, pink and red M&Ms
Instructions
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Serving
- Calories: 637
- Sugar: 70.1 g
- Sodium: 326 mg
- Fat: 26.8 g
- Carbohydrates: 94.4 g
- Protein: 6.7 g
- Cholesterol: 16.8 mg
Keywords: recipe for puppy chow, how to make puppy chow, puppy chow chex, puppy chow chex recipe, valentines dessert, dessert for valentine’s day, valentine’s day dessert, no bake dessert
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe, I had never thought of using cake mix for this, however I do have a question, I just made this and I found that I still needed to add some powdered sugar to the cake mix part because it seemed really sticky, for future reference should I have to do this or will it still dry?
You are so welcome, Susan! Thank you for your comment! As for your question, that didn’t happen for me so I can’t say for sure why you had that problem. I would think that once the chocolate completely dries, you shouldn’t have any sticky issues. Unless it’s the cake mix that is sticky, in which case it might be good to let that dry out a little before you coat your chex mix with it.
Thank you for replying, maybe cake mixes react differently, Or maybe I am just too inpatient, but the powdered sugar worked like a charm it’s all drying really good and I’m having trouble keeping my hand out of it, it is sooooooooo good. It’s been so long since I’ve made puppy chow, but it’s so good to know now that you can make it with different cake mixes so now I feel like the possibilities are endless. My daughter is almost 3 now and I have a feeling that this is one of those snacks that we will be having around the house quite often.
*impatient
What’s the shelf life? I was going to start making it tonight for a party Sunday.
Hi Kristie! That is totally fine. The puppy chow should be good for at least a week.
Love that this doesn’t contain peanut butter! I’m going to make it for my son’s preschool Valentine’s Day party. Do you know about how many servings you were able to get out of one batch?
Hi Marta! Great! Thank you! It makes 5 cups of puppy chow, so it depends a little bit on what you want the serving size to be. I’d think a cup would be a fairly good serving size (which would give you 5 servings), but for a party for young kids where they may be getting lots of treats, you may only want to do 1/2 cup servings (which would give you 10). I hope that helps!
Hi Lindsay- Thanks for sharing this idea! I found it on Pinterest and I’m glad I did because I also love your blog! Hannah 🙂
Thanks Hannah! I’m so glad you found the blog! It means a lot that you enjoy it! 🙂
My chocolate didn’t cover all the ches cereal – is it supposed too?
Hi Rachel! Yes, it should cover all the cereal. You should have used 10 oz of chocolate total (5 oz white, 5 oz red) and 5 cups of chex divided between the 2 colors. It may take a few minutes of stirring to get it coat the chex fully, but if you need to you can certainly add a little more chocolate. Keep in mind though that the powdered sugar and cake mix will also coat the chex and make it all look more fully coated. There should be enough chocolate on the chex that it can stick to the powder.
I just made some of this as part of our 14 days of love. I think my hubsy may try to eat the whole bag at once!
Haha! I’m glad you are enjoying it! I love the 14 days of love idea – that’s awesome!
Reblogged this on ally_haslett and commented:
sweet
Sorry, but I find it hilerious you had to give the disclaimer that it’s not for dog consuption!
Hi Christine! It does seem a little funny and although I’ve never been asked myself, I’ve seen the question posted elsewhere so I figured I’d jump the gun and go ahead and answer it. I think it may be that people from other parts of the world aren’t familiar with puppy chow. 🙂
Do you just mix the red candy melts with loose cake mix?
Hi Helen! No, you want to use the cake mix in place of the powdered sugar for the red candy melt covered chex. So for the white chocolate chex, you coat those with regular powdered sugar. For the red candy melt chex, you coat those with the cake mix. That way you get strawberry flavored chex and “cream” flavored chex. Does that make sense?
Love this! I just made cherry puppy chow using cherry gelatin. Love the cake mix idea too!
Thanks Aimee! The gelatin is an awesome idea too! You’re making my mind go in crazy directions, haha!