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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
I made this for Easter and I did 3 separate batches. I used 8 oz of white chocolate bits and 4 cups of rice chex cereal for each batch. I used food coloring to tint the melted bits…..5 drops of green in the first one……5 drops of red for the second one……5 drops of yellow for the third batch. I used the powdered sugar on the first batch and I found it was way too sweet. So, I didn’t use the powdered sugar on the next 2 batches and it was much better. I laid out parchment paper and spread out the coated cereal and let it dry. Then I added pastel peanut M & M’s. Thank you Lindsay for this very colorful and festive recipe. Happy Easter !!!
What about the peanut butter and butter?
This particular kind of puppy chow doesn’t use peanut butter and butter.
Wow! That’s some yummy stuff! I made it for my Sunday school class and then had to make a second batch for my own family because we couldn’t stay out of it! I used it in a Valentine’s themed children church lesson, which I blogged about here. I wanted to share the link with you, because I included a link to your site for the recipe. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks for the inspiration!
https://ryanandtobi.blogspot.com/2014/02/childrens-church-valentines-day-love.html
I’m so glad you like it Tobi! I don’t mind at all – thank you for linking back to me!
I’m the Editorial Assistant for Fun Family Crafts and I wanted to let you know that we have featured your yummy treat! You can see it here:
https://funfamilycrafts.com/strawberries-cream-puppy-chow/
If you have other kid-friendly crafts, we’d love it if you would submit them. If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above. Thanks for a wonderful project idea!
Great! Thanks Cindy! 🙂
these photos are absolutely beautiful. I know I’m a month over, but I could seriously use some of this right now.
Thanks Katie! No worries – strawberries and cream is good year round 😉
With a Puppy Love theme in my son’s classoom (and a student with peanute allergies) I opted for this over Chex’s Valentine mix. I added some of the new Scooby cereal (mini bones – vanilla) and passed out puppy origami valentine papers to do while they ate, turned out cute for kids! What a great recipe!
Thanks Rachel! I’m glad you liked it! Happy Valentine’s Day!
I made two boxes of this mix tonight. Didn’t really measure out just melted, mixed and dumped. Took me less than 30 minutes. Both my husband and oldest were swooning. Thanks for a quick and easy treat idea!!
Also, I didn’t want to buy the red candies so I just mixed in some gel food coloring to half of my melted white chocolate. It made a pretty pink color for the strawberry flavored pieces.
You’re welcome! I’m glad you all enjoyed it! I just love how easy it is. 🙂
So my daughter has a Valentines party tomorrow for school and she decided that of course she loves puppy chow and strawberries and chocolate Is perfect so we decided to make this recipe… I didn’t have strawberry cake mix on hand but I did have strawberry nest quick so I made a little mixture of strawberry nest quick and powdered sugar and use that instead. It was delicious!!!
What a great idea to use the Nesquick! My husband loves that stuff! I’m glad the puppy chow worked out for you! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Made a double batch of this today to send in cute treat bags for the V-day festivities in my 8 year old twins’ classrooms! Couldn’t find strawberry cake mix at my little local store so I subbed a cherry version and it turned out amazing! Thanks so much for sharing this recipe. Gotta love Pinterest!
You are so welcome! I’m glad you like it! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Sounds good will try tonight for tomorrow. Wish me good luck!
Good luck! Have a happy Valentine’s Day!
I’m trying to make 40 cups so I don’t really want to pay for the red candies as they are more expensive, do you think I could just do the white with all of it and then half with powdered sugar and the other half with red velvet cake, to give it the red color?
Hi Jacey – you could try that, but I’m not really sure how red they’d turn out. It’s quite possible that the red velvet mix would give you a nice red color, I just can’t say for sure since I haven’t done it myself. Certainly it would still taste great! Another option is that you could use some red food coloring and just add a few drops to get pink and have white and pink chocolate. If you try the red velvet, I’d love to know how it turns out!
okay so I did make these today, the red velvet cake mix wouldn’t work cause I opened the package and it was brown not red. So I did do the food coloring with the strawberry mix and that worked great. Also for those wondering about making a full box here is what I did:
1 box (13 cups) Chex Cereal (I used rice)
2 (12oz) bags vanilla chips
3/4 cups strawberry cake mix (in 1 box strawberry cake mix there is enough to make atleast 5 boxes worth of this strawberry puppy chow chex mix)
3/4 cups powdered sugar
1.5 cups M&M’s (not quite a whole bag)
divide into 6 cups and 6 cups (even though the box says 13 it was more like 12)
1 bag vanilla chips per 6 cups ( I added about 1/2 tsp or so red gel food coloring) then did the strawberry cake mix with that 6 cups
and 1 bag vanilla chips and 3/4 cups powdered sugar to the other 6 cups.
I made a new pinterest pin and linked it to your site, as I put them in snack bags (makes 16-18) about 1 cup each. And then I created a 5×7 photo and printed it and folded it in 1/2. see my link for the photo. Thanks so much for this! Love it!
https://pinterest.com/pin/18929260906063632/
If I dont have access to the red chocolate can I just use red food dye in the white for one of the batches?
Hi Kelly! You could certainly use red food coloring. The only thing is that it could take quite a bit to actually get a true red. You’d most likely want to just make it pink with a little bit of red added to the white chocolate. That would look great too!
First I wanted to say thank you for sharing this idea, I can’t wait to use it. But I did have 2 questions. I see that in ur picture u have sprinkles and chocolate hearts .. does that help the taste overall or is it just for decor? Also what if ur not a chocolate lover(let me be specific Im ok with white chocolate but not the rich brown chocolate, I know that’s silly but it just doesn’t taste good to me so I don’t eat it if I don’t have to) . Is there a subsitute u can use that keeps the sweet and salty taste? Thanks for ur help.
Thanks for your comment, Emily! You are very welcome! The sprinkles and chocolate hearts are actually all from the same sprinkle jar (from Target) and were just for looking festive in the pictures. They don’t affect the taste. And as for the chocolate – you could totally leave out the M&Ms and this would still be an awesome tasting puppy chow. I’ve sometimes seen white chocolate M&Ms like at Target or Walmart. You could try to find those. There’s also usually some kind of white chocolate candy, even just a candy bar, that you could use and either chop it up a little so that they are smaller pieces or maybe use as is. I hope that helps!
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!