I don't know about you but I struggle year-to-year on what to get for my kids teachers. I can't spend a lot but I like to give them something. These were a huge hit with my daughters teachers so I thought I'd share these tasty little treats my girls and I made.
Back story on how I came up with the idea: My 14yo daughter has become obsessed with swirling candy canes in her hot tea until they melt. So I decided to look on the internet for these candy cane spoons I've seen popping up on a few blogs lately, but everyone was sold out. In my search I came across a recipe where someone made these Marshmallow pops with sprinkles on them and I had an idea.... to make our own with 3 different flavors of chocolate (White, Semi-Sweet, and Dark) and then create 2 options for dipping them in.
First I went to Walmart and picked up some cute 6 inch cake pop sticks from Wilton (the red striped sticks were out of stock :( ) x 3 packages (30 per pkg). You'll need 2.5 pkg of sticks per 1 bag of marshmallows. I also grabbed some small 3x4 inch Wilton treat bags and 5/16 inch red ribbon.
I grabbed a bag of jumbo Marshmallows, Candy Canes, Oreos, Caramels and melting chocolates (couldn't find dark melting chocolate so I grabbed a dark choco bar) - I already had Red & White sprinkles and Sea Salt at home. I had the girls put candy canes and Oreos in separate zippered bags and then let them go to town with a meat tenderizer. We placed these items in 4 bowls with a spoon. We chose the following flavor combos:
White Chocolate with candy cane
White Chocolate with sprinkles
Semi-Sweet Chocolate with candy cane
Semi-Sweet Chocolate with Oreos pieces
Dark Chocolate with candy cane
Dark Chocolate with salted caramel (see directions below)
We placed the marshmallows on wax paper and placed the cake pop sticks in the center of the marshmallows.
We placed pieces of the melting chocolate (or chocolate bar) in a microwave safe bowl and heated for 2 minutes then removed and mixed with a spatula until smooth. Dip the marshmallows straight down into the chocolate covering about half way up the marshmallow (you can cover the entire marshmallow if you'd like, it's whatever you prefer) tap then immediately spoon sprinkles, Oreos, or candy cane until desired amount of coverage is achieved. Lay them out on wax paper or paper towels (not great option since fibers may stick) until chocolate is set (1-2 hours).
For the dark chocolate with salted caramel topping, dip marshmallows into chocolate then lay on wax paper until it sets (1 to 2 hours). We placed caramel into a zippered bag and placed in the microwave about 20 seconds or enough so that they are no longer solid. If the caramel is too warm either set aside for it to cool or run the bag under cool water, it should barely be warm to touch when piped onto marshmallow otherwise it will slide off. When ready cut a small piece of one edge of the baggie off (see photo).
Pipe in a zig zag pattern over top of dark chocolate dipped marshmallow, add a few sprinkles of Sea Salt, then place stick down in a cup to set (see photo).
After all the chocolate and topping has set, we then added the small treat bags one at a time over top of the marshmallow pop then tied closed with the red ribbon. If you'd like to be able to distinguish the flavors of chocolate more easily you can use a different color ribbon for each flavor of chocolate.
Then the kids added 1 of each flavor chocolate to a pretty large treat bag and added a strip of paper with a twisty tie (I think I got these bags at the Dollar Tree).
The strip reads: Marshmallow Pops
Enjoy by itself or stir into your favorite hot beverage!!!
Happy Holidays! (child's name)
These were so easy and so much fun to make with my 14 and 11 yr old daughters! You can make it even easier by not doing as many options as we did but we liked the idea of the variety.
Here is the cost break down:
Marshmallows $1.89
Candy Canes $3.50-4.00
Sprinkles (Free) or $1.00
Oreos $3.50
Melting chocolate Varies depending on brand
Cake Pop Sticks $3.79 (for decorative) or $1.79 (for plain white)
Treat bags $3.49
Ribbon $1.79
Large treat bags $1.00
Total was about .50-.55 cents per Marshmallow pop but you can get that cost down by choosing more cost effective items.
Enjoy! And have a Happy Holiday Season!
