Relatively Easy to Make Snowflake Crisps

Our first attempt at snowflake crisps!

My mom heard about a recipe to make snowflake crisps, though they aren't related to Christmas per se. She learned about this sweet Taiwanese snack from a friend and I Googled it to find the recipe, which is very similar to Rice Krispies squares. The snowflake part of the name refers to milk powder that is sprinkled in it and on top at the end.

A very basic recipe uses five ingredients: unsalted butter, mini marshmallows (to melt faster), Ritz Crackers, milk powder, and dried cranberries. When we attempted ours today, we added chopped pecans.

Several recipes warned not to crush the Ritz Crackers too small, so I just broke them in half, or at most thirds. They give the snack some structure, and a hint of savoury flavour. If Rice Krispies were used, I would imagine it would taste sweeter and less complex.

Once the butter melted and the marshmallows too, the addition of the milk powder immediately made the gooey mixture more solid which in turn made it harder to combine the rest of the ingredients -- the crackers, cranberries and nuts.

We had a heck of a time trying to integrate them all together and tried to mix them by hand even, but not much luck. In the end we put the giant clump in a parchment paper-lined baking tray and tried to pack it together as densely as possible. It did not look as easy as the one in the YouTube video!

Nevertheless, it really did taste different from Rice Krispies, which are more chewy, while this snowflake crisp is more solid thanks to the crackers and pecans. Hopefully we can nail down the mixing better next time, probably need to work a bit faster incorporating all the ingredients while the melted marshmallow mixture is still warm!