Rice Krispie Treat Grotto for Our Lady of Lourdes

Inspired by the Grotto for Our Lady found in the archives, Lacy at Catholic Icing made a Rice Krispie variation and submitted it for publication here at Catholic Cuisine.  Thank you Lacy!  

The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is on February 11. Last year I saw the grotto made from fruity pebbles, and I thought it was one of the most adorable Catholic feast day celebration ideas I had ever seen! I knew I had to try my hand at making one this year! :-)

I didn't actually have a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, so we just used the Mary from our Little People Nativity set. I get that it's cute to make a grotto out of fruity pebbles or cocoa pebbles because of the play on words "pebbles", but I opted for regular rice krispies.

First I made a regular batch of rice krispie treats. Some of them were spread flat into a pan like normal, but some of it I molded for the grotto using my bunt pan.

Warm rice krispie treats are surprisingly easy to mold any which way you want to. I read somewhere that if they start to set up too fast, you can use your hair dryer to make them pliable again. (If you wanted to make a big grotto, I think you could totally fill the bunt pan and cut it in half for the grotto piece.) Then I cut the sheet of rice krispie treats into squares and built my grotto as best I could.

 

I decided it looked boring and unfinished. It needed something more. So I whipped up another batch of rice krispie treats (only with cornflakes and green food coloring- like the cornflake wreaths you can make at Christmas time) to add some greenery cascading down our grotto. This was super easy to do while this stuff was warm! Just blob it on there- it looks so natural! ;-)  It still seemed to be missing something... so I added a few roses at Mary's feet. They were also really easy to make. Just take a long skinny piece of a fruit roll up and roll it into a tiny rose. Voila!

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!