Funfetti Puppy Chow

This classic sweet snack gets a festive makeover with this funfetti puppy chow! Chex cereal is coated in white candy melts, colorful sprinkles, and dusted with a sweetened white cake mix. Perfect for snacking or gifting!

This post contains affiliate links. Read the disclosure policy.

About Funfetti Puppy Chow

A long time ago I had big dreams of making a whole series of recipe posts devoted to nothing but different flavors of puppy chow – from classic to fluffernutter to peppermint to red velvet to pretty much anything else you can think of – and I still really want to do it, because quite frankly I absolutely love this stuff.

Classic puppy chow was one of the first treats I ever (successfully) made that tasted great without having to put in a ton of work.

And really, that’s the true goal we all have in life, isn’t it?

To get great results for minimal effort.

Or, at least, I know that’s what I wake up each day trying to do.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say here is that making puppy chow is like the embodiment of my life goals…  and I’m totally okay with that.

I don’t know how or why, but something magical happens when you whip up a batch of this indulgent snack, because I’ve yet to have a batch of puppy chow (or muddy buddies or monkey munch or whatever oddball name we call this stuff we love) that I didn’t like.

Which, of course, is both good and bad, seeing as how I can easily take out a whole batch of puppy chow by myself within a day of making it.

But to get back to the true topic of this post, by now you might be wondering:

With all the flavors of puppy chow out there, why did you go with funfetti?

Well, for one, funfetti has been on my list of must-make puppy chow for quite some time. Like all my puppy chow recipes, this post was long overdue.

And for two…  well, the batch of puppy chow pictured here was actually the second batch I made that day. My first batch was supposed to be the elusive red velvet puppy chow, but the results were…  less can optimal. Basically, my red velvet puppy chow was not red or festive at all – the red and pink sprinkles were completely covered up, and it turned out more of a tan color – and really, how could I possibly call a puppy chow red velvet if it’s not even read? I’ll tell you how: I couldn’t. So I ate all the evidence of my failure (because all puppy chow tastes good no matter what it looks like) and took that recipe back to the drawing board for now.

In the end, I was able to “save the day” by mixing up more sprinkles (from red and pink to all the colors of the rainbow) and swapping out the red velvet cake mix to some white cake mix I still had on hand from last week’s recipe. And voilà, the recipe was saved and I still had a fun and festive birthday cake puppy chow to add to my (slowly growing) list!

And the best part?

I got to enjoy the end result:

Colorful puppy chow with the taste of sweetened white cake.

Life goals really do taste better with sprinkles.

What is puppy chow?

Despite what the name might imply, this puppy chow recipe is not for dogs. In fact, it’s a very popular and classic childhood treat.

However, if you’re anything like me, you might not have heard of puppy chow until well into adulthood And even still, it might not have gone by the name puppy chow. Some regions of the United States call it muddy buddies or even monkey bunch.

All of these names are correct, and they’re all referring to any recipe where Chex cereal has been covered in a sticky coating (chocolate, peanut butter, etc) and then dusted with something powdery and sweet (powdered sugar, cake mix, etc).

How do you make puppy chow?

Puppy chow is very versatile because it only has two main actions:

Step 1 – Coating Chex cereal in some type of liquid chocolate or candy.

Step 2 – Coating the still-wet Chex cereal with a sugar or other sweet & flavorful powder.

Using the above two steps as a guideline, there are seemingly endless flavor combinations you can come up with.

Most puppy chow recipes usually make a large batch, too, with the main ingredient being a whole box of Chex cereal.

You’ll have plenty of this classic crunchy snack food gifting, parties, or even just for your family and a lazy movie night on the couch.

notes & tips for this birthday cake puppy chow:

• When making this recipe, you’ll need a big mixing bowl so you have enough room to maneuver and stir. I own a 13 quart mixing bowl for this very reason.
• Many recipes for muddy buddies call for vanilla extract, but I didn’t feel it was needed in this case; the white cake mix holds the flavor up pretty well. That being said, if you’d still like to add vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon should be plenty.

More puppy chow recipes

More funfetti recipes

• Funfetti Cake Batter Milkshake

This post was originally posted on February 12, 2016. It was updated on January 10th, 2018.