Marshmallows, Rice Krispies, a little butter and your mom’s best 9”-by-13” Pyrex baking dish — the only ingredients needed for that ubiquitous, always-welcome fixture of the Midwestern potluck, the Rice Krispie Treat.
The alchemist who helped turn Rice Krispies from a mediocre, snap-crackle-popping milk-sponge cereal into a dessert icon was Iowa State University grad Mildred Day. The year was 1929.
Day was an employee at Kellogg’s; as a married woman, her bosses had to grant her special dispensation to work for the company. Inspired by the classic boardwalk treat of popcorn balls — the kernels stuck together with melted sugar — Day and Malitta Jensen, a coworker from Tampa, tried to recreate the concept with Rice Krispies and melted marshmallows. It worked like a crunchy dream.
Day’s daughter, Sandra Rippie, called her an “outstanding professional woman years before women were given equal rights,” per the Des Moines Register.
However, Rippie claims she didn’t learn about her mother’s role in inventing the Rice Crispie Treat until she was an adult. Her mother didn’t like to make them — probably because the first test of the dessert was a grueling two-day marathon in which Day produced tray after tray for a Kansas City Camp Fire Girls fundraiser. The treats were a hit, of course, but one can only stare down the barrel of yet another gloopy mass of marshmallow so many times before balking.
“If you’d made them for two weeks from 6:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night,” Day told her daughter, “you wouldn’t want to make them again either.”
This article is from Little Village’s December 2025 Peak Iowa issue, a collection of stories drawn from Hawkeye State history, culture and legend. Browse dozens of Peak Iowa tales here.
