Krispie Cookies By Frances

These aren’t Rice Krispie treats. They’re actual baked cookies with crisp rice cereal folded into a brown sugar and white sugar cookie dough, giving every bite a crackly crunch that a standard cookie can’t touch.

The base is a double-fat dough: both shortening and butter get creamed together with a full cup each of brown sugar and white sugar. That combination gives you the chewiness of shortening with the flavor of butter. Cream of tartar paired with baking soda creates the lift, and it also gives the cookies a slightly tangy edge that cuts through all that sweetness.

Four cups of crisp rice cereal is a lot for a 2-cup flour dough. Fold it in gently as directed. Rough mixing crushes the cereal and you lose the crunch. The goal is whole, intact puffs of rice suspended throughout the cookie.

Kitchen Tips

• Fold the cereal in by hand with a spatula, not a mixer. Electric beaters will pulverize the rice cereal.
• Drop by teaspoon and don’t flatten. These spread on their own during baking.
• Pull at 12 minutes for chewier cookies, 15 for crispier. The brown sugar means they’ll look darker than you expect, so go by texture, not color.

Variations

• Fold in a handful of chocolate chips with the cereal for a chocolate-crunch cookie.
• Add chopped peanuts for a salty-sweet, crunchy contrast.
• Use butterscotch chips instead of chocolate for a caramel-flavored twist.