Little Debbie Star Crunch Recipe

Star Crunch is a Little Debbie snack: a soft, chewy cookie topped with caramel and crisp rice and coated in fudge. The homemade version leaves out the cookie and builds the rest in one pan. Melt butter, caramels and marshmallows, stir in a cup of milk chocolate chips and three cups of crisp rice cereal, and shape the mixture into twelve rounds that set in half an hour.

What is a Star Crunch?

Little Debbie describes its Star Crunch cookies as a soft, chewy cookie topped with caramel and crispy rice and coated with fudge. They are sold in single serve, family and big packs.

The copy keeps the three things that the name is about, caramel, crisp rice and chocolate, and drops the cookie base. Without it the chocolate is not a coating but part of the binder. One of the twelve comes to about 215 calories by USDA figures. MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Little Debbie.

Recipe

Homemade Star Crunch

A no-bake homemade version of Little Debbie's Star Crunch — caramels, marshmallows and milk chocolate melted together and mixed with crisp rice cereal. Twelve cookies.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

10 min

Cook

8 min

Total

48 min

Serves

12

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 7 ounces soft caramels (about 24, unwrapped)
• 2 cups mini marshmallows
• 1 cup milk chocolate chips
• 3 cups crisp rice cereal

Instructions

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Melt the butter with the caramels in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring often, for 5 to 6 minutes, until smooth.
3. Add the marshmallows and stir until they have melted. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the chocolate chips until the mixture is smooth and brown.
4. Fold in the cereal until every grain is coated.
5. Drop the mixture onto the parchment in 12 mounds of about 1/4 cup each and flatten them with a buttered spoon into rounds 3 inches across. Let them set at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Nutrition

Calories:

215

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Chewy, not hard

Caramel sets by temperature. Melted gently and never boiled, it stays as soft as it was in the wrapper. Brought to a boil, it loses water and sets hard enough to pull at a filling.

• Low heat and patience. The caramels take five to six minutes. On high heat the bottom scorches before the middle melts.
• Marshmallows keep the cookie chewy for days. Without them it turns brittle.
• Chocolate off the heat. In the hot caramel the chips melt on their own. Over the flame they can seize.

Homemade Star Crunch with a chocolate coating

For a cookie with a chocolate coating, as the maker describes the original, leave the chocolate out of the pan. Shape the caramel and rice mixture into rounds, let them set, then dip them in 8 ounces of melted milk chocolate thinned with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil. Set them on parchment until the chocolate is firm.

Star Crunch ice cream sandwiches

Two thin rounds with a scoop of vanilla ice cream between them make an ice cream sandwich; press the rounds to 1/4 inch while they are still warm. Chopped into pieces, the cookies also go into a homemade ice cream such as the Gold Medal Ribbon in place of the caramel.

A week in a tin

Layered between sheets of parchment in a closed tin, the cookies keep a week at room temperature. In the refrigerator they harden; let them stand for 15 minutes before eating.

Other no-bake cookies on this site are the lemon oatmeal no-bake cookies. A candy bar copy with a peanut butter nougat is the Reese's Fast Break.