I don’t meditate. I try and I just can’t. Meditating usually ends up with me napping the day away.
On the other hand, I have been told that I need to meditate or find some way to make my mind quiet so I can manage my stress.
Aha! This is my excuse to start baking! Over the past week, I have baked cinnamon rolls, loaves of bread, taught the teenager how easy it is to make bread from scratch, and now I’m starting on holiday goodies. Tonight’s project: Marshmallow Pops
The idea came to me when I saw these puppies for sale in the grocery store’s fancy-schmancy bakery case. They sell regular sized marshmallow pops for 75c each and 99c for pops made out of the jumbo marshmallows. Outrageous, right? So I stole the idea.
Start with pretzel sticks and chocolate meltys. Oh, and don’t forget the marshmallows. I used up the last of the caramel marshmallows along with some white marshmallows.
No Mom, I don’t eat marshmallows All The Time. I just happened to have a lot left over from summer.
You’ll also need baking decor sprinkles, chopped nuts, mini M&Ms or other tasty things. I grabbed whatever I could find in my box of baking supplies.
Stick two pretzels into the top of each marshmallow. You can see I tried 3 sticks in that white one there, but it was kind of crowded. The jumbos will need 3 sticks to hold the weight of the chocolate.
Nuke the chocolate for 30 seconds, check it and nuke it again for another 30 seconds. Repeat until it’s goopy and perfect for dipping.
By the way, chocolate chips are a little too soft for dipping. Use almond bark or, if you can find dipping chocolate use that instead. (Dipping chocolate can be found at a baking and candy supply store or in the candy making area of a craft store – I get it in bulk at Winco here in Oregon.)
Dip and swirl your marshmallow into the chocolate. The pretzels make a great handle.
Let the chocolate cool for a few moments, then dip in some baking decor sprinkles. My chocolate kept dropping into the sprinkles until I scraped the extra chocolate off the bottom before dipping into the sprinkles.
Halfway through, I found paper liners for mini muffins. They made these treats look fancy. Like 75c worth of fancy.
I also tried dipping the pretzels into a little chocolate before stabbing them into the marshmallows. Made no difference with getting everything to stick together, but you can’t go wrong with more chocolate, right?
Pretzels are kind of fragile and a few broke during the stabbing process. I dipped the little pretzel stubs in chocolate and stuck them into the marshmallow. I figured the extra chocolate would make up for the broken pretzel. Kind of like a chocolate apology.
I wonder if a chocolate apology would be acceptable in other situations, too?
Sorry I burned your dinner. Here’s some chocolate.
I’m sorry that I didn’t pick you up right away after your appointment. I brought you some chocolate.
Heck, I’d become demanding and impossible to please just so I can have more chocolate.
Oh wait, I already do that.
…It’s proof that it works!
I got bored with sprinkles so I grabbed slivered almonds and what I thought were chopped pecans. Turns out the “pecans” were really Andes minty chocolate bits.
Even better!
I couldn’t help myself. I had to taste one of the almond dipped ones. I love almonds.
Blech. Now I see on the package that these nuts are best before November 2010. They’re rancid. Oh well, two marshmallows for the trash.
They sure looked nice, though.
The rest of these look pretty darned nice, too. This was just a practice run with ingredients I already had on hand. I saw they have pumpkin marshmallows in the store this year. That would be nice with white chocolate and maybe a dip in cinnamon sugar and a dusting of nutmeg.
Meanwhile, I’m going to pack most of these up and give them to the neighbors. Not as a chocolate apology, but as a thank you for being friendly, helpful neighbors. (If a chocolate apology is a good thing, than a chocolate thank you must be a great thing.)
