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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
This looks so pretty and fun. Could you use finely ground freeze dried strawberries in place of the cake mix?
You could definitely give that a try! Maybe mix it into some powdered sugar so it isn’t quite so strong.
I understand the toasted cake mix but where does it apply in the recipe?
The cake mix is used in step 5.
Another huge success at Kohl’s! This was my first time making puppy chow alone and it was so easy to make! Planning on making some for St. Patrick’s Day. I did have to use a full box of Chex mix to make sure I had enough for everyone who wanted it. Is there any way to make the powdered sugar green? The manager who is also a baker told me that it’s not possible with food coloring since it would become a liquid.
What do you mean by toasted on the cake mix?
Because of more recent concerns with raw flour, it’s recommended that you toast it/heat it in the oven prior to using. So bake it at 350 for about 5 minutes.
Hi Lindsey, so about how many people can this serve?
These are precious! I tried to read through the comments to find this answer (which is a treat – hahaha!) My kitchen scale is in temporary storage. About how much is 5oz of the chips and candy melts? Thanks!
I would say it’s about a “heaping” 2/3 cup.
Sounds delicious, some recipes call for cream cheese and milk to mix with the white chocolate I believe, I wonder if that makes it more moist? What do you think? ????
Those sound like very strange ingredients for puppy chow to me. This mix is meant to be more crunchy.