The Making of Marshmallows

I wanted to do something homemade for Christmas gifts this year, but also something food related as these last few years have been an intense food journey for me and I wanted to create something celebratory and comforting.  I thought of all the hot drinks and soup we consume during the cold, dark winter months and settled on giving a mug, hot chocolate mix and homemade marshmallows.

Mugs were easy!  Some discounted stacker mugs from Cost Plus World Market; several personalized mugs for those whom I found the perfect design for; hand-stamped and written tags for directions from my scrapbooking supplies; and the first step was completed.

To make the little baggies of hot chocolate drink mix, I used Lake Champlain’s traditional hot chocolate mix. Three tablespoons per baggie and the baggies were purchased at local craft store, Ben Franklin Crafts.

Next came the hard part – sticky, gooey, sweet, deliciousness – marshmallows!  I knew I wanted to use different flavors as I had seen from this lovely blog post by Audra Mulkern.  However, I did not want to use corn syrup, so after some internet searching I found a corn syrup free recipe and used Audra’s recipe to know how much chocolate powder to add.






My first batch was so thin; I ended up making them into mini marshmallows and then doubled all of my future batches which turned out to make the size just right for medium to large size marshmallows.

Flavor extravaganza!

Dark Chili Chocolate

 

Bailey's

 

Bourbon and Vanilla

 







The flavors I used were:

• Bailey’s Irish Cream
• Bourbon and Vanilla
• Theo Chocolate Dark Chili Chocolate 
• Theo Chocolate Dark Chocolate
• Lake Champlain Traditional Hot Chocolate and Mocha Hot Chocolate

Lesson’s learned:

• Use a smaller pan size so you don’t have to double your recipe
• Use a square pan
• Coat inside of pan with parchment paper AND powdered sugar
• Dip knife in powdered sugar to cut marshmallows
• May need to use more chocolate powder to increase flavor
• Use a bigger pan than what you might need for boiling the sugar/gelatin mix.  It can boil over very easily!
• Eat quickly as they start to go stale more readily!

My favorite flavors were the Bailey’s Irish Cream, Bourbon Vanilla and Dark Chocolate.  It was so much fun to pick all the different mugs and fill them with the hand/homemade goodies!  Definitely worth the effort and overall the marshmallows were fairly easy to make and super delicious to eat!!