Keto Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats (No Marshmallows)

Two peanut butter Rice Krispie treat squares topped with chocolate chips on a round wooden board
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Introduction

Rice Krispie treats are a staple in the snack world. They’re delicious and super easy to make, and as far as snack foods go, they’re relatively healthy-ish. Sort of. A little. Maybe. Alright, perhaps not at all.

Two things stand between the original and a keto version, and they are both load-bearing: the puffed rice cereal, and the melted marshmallows holding it together. The cereal is a carbohydrate problem — it is mostly rice. The marshmallows are a sugar problem, and a structural one, because melted sugar is what sets the slab. So both get replaced, and it is worth knowing what with before you start.

What Replaces What

The cereal is HighKey frosted protein cereal. It is not puffed rice and it does not pretend to be, but the pieces are a similar size and they stay crisp under the syrup, which is what the recipe actually needs from them.

The marshmallows are gone entirely, and nothing marshmallow-shaped takes their place. What binds these instead is peanut butter and sugar-free honey melted into butter, which sets firm when it is cold. That is a real difference in how they behave, not just in what is in them: a classic treat is chewy and stretchy, and these are firmer and snappier, closer to a no-bake bar than to the marshmallow original.

If you go in expecting the stretch, you will think something went wrong. Nothing did.

If you are choosing a jar for the binder, our guide to whether peanut butter is keto covers what to check on the label.

Keep the Heat Low, and Give It the Two Hours

Two places this goes sideways, both about temperature.

Melt the butter gently. Low heat, stirring now and then. It browns faster than you expect, and browned butter is a different recipe.

Do not cook the peanut butter mixture. It only needs to go smooth and pourable. Push it further and the sugar-free honey tightens up, and instead of coating the cereal it clumps around it.

Then the part that needs no attention and the most patience: two hours in the refrigerator, minimum. This is a no-bake recipe, so chilling is the only thing making these into bars rather than a bowl of sticky cereal. Cut them too early and they crumble. Lift the whole slab out by the parchment and cut it on a board — much cleaner than digging squares out of the dish.

Keto Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats

Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
5 minutes
Additional Time
2 hours
Total Time
2 hours 15 minutes
Yield
12 rice krispie treats
Course
Dessert
Cuisine
American

Ingredients

All Ingredients

Nutrition Facts

12 servings per recipe
Trans Fat 0g 0% 0g 0%
Sugar Alcohols 0g 0% 0g 0%

About these numbers: We are home cooks, not certified nutritionists. Nutrition is shared as a courtesy. We pick a representative product for each ingredient, and our recipe system works out the totals from the amounts in this recipe, so please treat them as a helpful estimate rather than a guarantee. The brands you buy, any swaps you make, and how generously you portion the recipe will all move these numbers.

Directions

  1. Gather your key ingredients.

    Measure the cereal, butter, sugar-free honey, peanut butter, and chocolate chips before you start. See the Ingredient Notes below for tips on choosing each one.

  2. Grease a 9x9 baking dish or line it with parchment paper.

    This will help prevent the peanut butter rice krispie treats from sticking to the baking dish.

  3. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

    Low and slow, stirring now and then. There is nothing to gain from rushing this, and butter browns before you notice it has.

  5. Once the butter has melted, stir in the natural peanut butter.

    If you want a more pronounced peanut butter flavor to your rice krispie treats, consider adding 1-2 tablespoons of natural peanut butter or a few drops of peanut butter extract.

  6. Add the sugar-free honey after the natural peanut butter.

    Stir until the peanut butter mixture has become smooth and pourable. Be careful not to heat it too much.

  7. Once the peanut butter mixture is well-mixed, remove it from the heat.

    Let it cool for a few minutes before proceeding to the next step.

  8. Pour the mixture over the HighKey frosted protein cereal.

    Use a silicon spatula to scrape off any remaining mixture from the saucepan. Stir until the ingredients are well-combined. Let your rice krispie mixture cool for a few more minutes.

    Go by coverage rather than by the box. Every piece of cereal should be coated and the mixture should hold together when you press a little of it between two fingers. Dry cereal still loose in the bowl means there is more of it than the syrup can carry, and those bars will not hold once they are cut.

  10. Stir in 2/3 of the chocolate chips.

    Use a spoon or spatula to evenly distribute the chocolate chips throughout the rice krispie mixture.

  11. Press the mixture into the bottom of the prepared baking dish.

    Use a piece of parchment paper to press the mixture down to keep it from sticking to your hands.

  12. Scatter the remaining chocolate chips over the top.

    Press them in lightly so they set into the surface rather than sitting loose on it.

  13. Chill for at least two hours, then cut.

    This is what turns a loose mixture into a bar you can pick up. Two hours is the minimum; the tray cuts more cleanly the longer it has had. Lift the whole slab out by the parchment and cut it on a board.

Notes

Ingredient Notes

The ingredient list above gives the exact quantities. These notes explain what each one contributes and what to look for.

  • HighKey frosted protein cereal: What stands in for puffed rice. The recipe is written around one box, and box sizes are not something a recipe can pin down — go by the coverage cue in the method rather than assuming your box matches.
  • Unsalted butter: Gives the treats stability. Salted butter also works if you don’t mind a little extra saltiness.
  • Sugar-free honey: Holds the cereal together and adds sweetness. It is the binder, so the thing that matters about it is that it pours. We do not have a version made with any other syrup.
  • Natural peanut butter: Keeps the treats free of added sugar and other additives. Use creamy peanut butter for easy mixing.
  • Sugar-free chocolate chips: Add texture and chocolate flavor. The recipe is built on ChocZero chips. Other sugar-free brands are formulated differently, so the amounts and the nutrition here assume ChocZero.

Tools

A saucepan, a mixing bowl, a spatula, and a 9x9 dish lined with parchment.

The parchment is worth singling out twice over: it is what gets the slab out of the dish in one piece, and a folded piece of it is also the best thing to press the mixture down with. Pressing by hand means most of it ends up on your hands.

Preparation

  • Want your chocolate chip mix-ins to be melted? You can directly add them after removing the peanut butter mixture from the heat. It should still be warm enough to melt the chocolate chips. Make sure that the melted chocolate chips are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
  • Natural peanut butter can vary in consistency. If it’s too thick, it may not mix well with the other ingredients. You can remedy this by gently warming up the peanut butter before mixing it with the melted butter and sugar-free honey.
  • Extra mix-ins go in with the chocolate chips. Unsweetened shredded coconut, crushed nuts or chia seeds all work. Skip anything wet — fresh fruit will soften the cereal you are trying to keep crisp.

Storage

  • Keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
  • The cold is what is holding them together in the first place, which is why the refrigerator is the default and the counter is not. At room temperature they soften over a day or two and stop cutting cleanly.
  • They freeze too, in an airtight container or freezer bag. Nothing goes off in a freezer held at 0°F, so what you are judging after thawing is how they cut, not whether they have kept.

Serving Suggestions

  • This recipe calls for using chocolate chips as toppings, but feel free to use other keto-friendly toppings. Flaky sea salt over the top is the one worth trying — peanut butter and sugar-free chocolate are both sweet, and a little salt gives them something to push against.
  • Cut them small for a party or into proper squares for a dessert. The nutrition is per serving at the yield above, so cutting them differently moves those numbers.
  • You may also prepare a keto-friendly dip into which you can dip your peanut butter Rice Krispie treats. For example, you can make a chocolate dip using melted sugar-free chocolate chips or a low-carb chocolate bar.
  • Turn your Rice Krispie treats into Rice Krispie pops by inserting a straw, popsicle, or lollipop stick into each of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make this without peanut butter?

Cashew or almond butter are the usual choices, and sunflower seed butter covers a nut allergy. What none of them has done is stand in for the peanut butter here — the nut butter is doing the binding rather than the flavoring, so changing it does not leave the rest of the recipe alone.

What matters is the consistency rather than the flavor: you want one that is creamy and a little loose, the sort you have to stir when the jar is new. A stiff, set peanut butter will not pour over the cereal, and the syrup is what holds the bars together.

Marshmallows are a different question. They are what binds a traditional Rice Krispie treat, but this recipe is not built that way — the binder here is peanut butter cooked with butter and sugar-free honey, and melted marshmallow sets by a different mechanism entirely. Swapping one for the other is a new recipe rather than a substitution in this one.

Can I use a different type of cereal?

This one is written around HighKey frosted protein cereal, and that is the only cereal we can vouch for here.

If you try another, look at the shape of the pieces rather than the brand on the box, because that is what decides whether a slab holds together at all. Small, light and crisp — close to puffed rice — is what the syrup can coat and carry. Pieces much bigger leave gaps it cannot bridge, and anything dense sinks rather than suspending.

How can I make the treats sweeter without adding more honey?

Not with more honey, and the reason is structural: the honey is the binder, so adding more of it to chase sweetness changes how the slab sets.

A keto-friendly sweetener — stevia or monk fruit — is not doing that job and would not affect the set in the same way, so that is where to look. We do not have an amount for it, though, so add a little at a time and taste as you go.

Can I make my peanut butter Rice Krispie treats dairy-free?

The butter is not a garnish here — it is melted into the binder with the peanut butter and the sugar-free honey, and the set depends on it. Replacing it is a reformulation of that binder rather than a swap within the recipe, and we do not have a dairy-free version of it to give you.

The other two are where you need to read labels rather than take our word for it. Protein cereals are commonly built on milk protein, and many sugar-free chocolate chips contain milk solids even when they are sold as dark. Both are entirely brand-dependent, so check the specific box and bag you are holding before calling a batch dairy-free.

What do you substitute the rice cereal for in this recipe?

HighKey frosted protein cereal. Plain Rice Krispies are mostly rice, which puts them out of reach on keto — the swap is the whole reason this recipe exists.

It is not puffed rice and does not behave exactly like it, but it is close on size and it stays crisp under the syrup, which is what the recipe needs from it.

Wrap Up

They keep better in the refrigerator than on the counter, which is the opposite of the originals — the cold is holding them together, so room temperature softens them over a day or two.

If it is the peanut butter you are here for, our Keto Peanut Butter Fudge and Cocoa Peanut Butter Truffles are both no-bake too.

Have you tried this recipe or any other recipe on the blog? Please rate it below and let us know your thoughts in the comments! We love hearing from you!

Correction — October 2, 2026: The card claimed 15 minutes and left out the two hours of chilling its own last step asks for. The total time now includes that chill.