The Best EASY Puppy Chow Recipe (Muddy Buddies)

This puppy chow recipe is a fantastic holiday treat that is sure to please a crowd. It combines melted chocolate chips with peanut butter, Chex cereal, and powdered sugar to create a sweet snack that's to die for. It's satisfyingly sweet and crunchy, and the best part is you can make it in less than 20 minutes. Plus, all you need are 4 ingredients!

The Best Puppy Chow

If you've never heard of puppy chow before, then there's a good chance you've heard it called one of its many other names, such as white trash, monkey munch, muddy buddies, reindeer chow, muddy munch, and the list keeps going.

Whatever you call it though, this is going to be the best puppy chow you've ever had! I mean, it's just crazy good, and out of all of my holiday desserts, this one is my favorite.

The crunchy Chex cereal is coated with a perfectly thick layer of chocolate and peanut butter, and then it's dusted with a generous amount of sweet powdered sugar. It's basically like the chocolate peanut butter muddy buddies you can buy at the store, but I think it tastes much better made from scratch!

Plus, this crowd-pleasing puppy chow is so simple to make anyone can do it. It honestly might be easier to make than driving to the store to pick some up! And it makes a great holiday gift too, especially if you wrap it up in a cute plastic bag with some festive string.

Ingredients

As I mentioned before, this puppy chow recipe is made with only 4 ingredients. And they're such simple ingredients you probably have all of them at home already!

Anyway, here's what you'll need to make it:

• ½ cup creamy peanut butter
• ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3 cups rice Chex cereal 
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Pretty simple stuff, right?!

By the way, if you have extra peanut butter and chocolate chips, you can use them to make these easy peanut butter balls next! They're another classic holiday dessert everyone is sure to love.

Ingredient Substitutions and Suggestions

Now, I always make this puppy chow recipe with the ingredients listed above, but you definitely can make a few changes to it and put your own spin on it.

First off, if any of the snack lovers in your life are allergic to peanut butter, you can easily substitute it with sunflower seed butter - or even almond butter. Just use the same amount of sunflower seed butter as you would if you were making the puppy chow with peanut butter.

As for the cereal, I like to use the boxed rice Chex cereal in this recipe, specifically the cinnamon-flavored kind. I think the warm spice of the cinnamon is a tasty touch to this puppy chow. But, you can also use plain rice Chex cereal, peanut butter Chex, or even chocolate Chex cereal to make this even more decadent.

Oh, and of course, I can't forget about the chocolate chips for the peanut butter chocolate mixture. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate chips, but you can use any chocolate flavor that you prefer. White chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, and milk chocolate chips are all great choices for this puppy chow recipe.

How to Make Puppy Chow

Now, as I mentioned earlier, this puppy chow recipe is super simple to make. 

Basically, you just melt the chocolate and peanut butter together, pour it over the Chex cereal, let it cool, add the powdered sugar, and then let it harden. That's honestly all there is to it!

So, let's not waste another second and get cooking!

Step 1: Melt the Chocolate and Peanut Butter

First things first, take out a saucepot and the peanut butter and chocolate chips of your choice. 

Now, put the saucepot over medium-high heat and add the peanut butter and chocolate chips to it. Heat these two ingredients for a minute or so - stirring every now - until the chocolate fully melts and you have a smooth chocolate peanut butter mixture.

Step 2: Combine the Cereal and Chocolate Mixture

Once you have the melted peanut butter chocolate mixture all ready to go, you'll want to add half of the rice Chex cereal of your choice to a large bowl and quickly pour half the chocolate peanut butter mixture into the bowl with the rice Chex cereal. Then, give everything a good mix with a rubber spatula until the Chex cereal is fully coated in the peanut butter chocolate mixture.

Now that you've got that looking good, you can add the rest of the Chex cereal to the bowl and the rest of the peanut butter chocolate mixture and stir again to coat the rest of the cereal evenly in it. 

Step 3: Add The Powdered Sugar

Now, when you've got the Chex cereal pieces evenly coated in the chocolate peanut butter mixture you'll want to let it cool down slightly for a few minutes. If you're impatient, you can refrigerate it, but make sure you don't allow the chocolate to harden completely. 

Anyway, once the chocolate-coated cereal has cooled - but hasn't totally hardened - you'll want to put half of it in a mesh sieve and add half of the powdered sugar to it. Then, toss it gently, until it’s evenly coated with powdered sugar. You can also just mix the muddy buddies with the powdered sugar in a bowl, but I think using the sieve adds a nice even dusting to the cereal.

After you've got the first half of the cereal dusted in powdered sugar you'll want to repeat the same process with the rest of the cereal and powdered sugar.

Finally, once you've got all of your puppy chow well coated in the sugar you can add it to a large bowl, dig in, and enjoy!

How to Store Puppy Chow

This recipe for puppy chow makes about 6 servings, but it's not that hard to finish off the entire thing yourself, it's just that good.

So I highly recommend doubling or tripling this recipe if you're planning on serving it to a large group. Just simply increase the ingredient measurements to make a bigger batch.

Then, if you happen to have any leftovers - or if you want to make this puppy chow ahead of time and store it for later - you can transfer it to an airtight container, and store it at room temperature for about 1-2 weeks.

Wrapping it Up

Well, that's how to make puppy chow from scratch in just a few easy steps!

This really is a snack mix like no other. The light coating of powdered sugar, the sweet hard chocolate peanut butter shell, and the perfectly crisp rice Chex cereal are just so, so good together.

Whether you call it puppy chow, reindeer chow, or muddy buddies, this snack mix is truly irresistible, and everyone is always obsessed with it whenever I make it.

Anyway, I hope you like this puppy chow muddy buddies recipe as much as I/we do. And, as always, if you give it a try, let us know how it goes in the comments below.

More Recipes

There's no doubt that this puppy chow recipe is one of the most satisfying treats that we have on our blog. With that said though, we have a ton of other delicious ones too.

Here are some of our readers' favorite ones: 

• Christmas crack
• Fantasy fudge
• Peppermint bark
• Christmas cookie fudge
• Cream cheese fruit dip

Oh, and for more easy desserts - just like this puppy chow - make sure to check out our YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram pages. We post new ones there every single day.

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