I had this idea because I bought a bag of marshmallows for a Thanksgiving game that I saw on “The Chew”, and wanted a way to get rid of the rest of them. Christmas only comes around once a year, and in the spirit of the holidays and healthy living you have to indulge, and hopefully making this little treat will become a new holiday tradition for you as it now has for us. This is a great little food craft that my 3 year old had a blast making, and it’s foolproof. There is no way to mess it up, and if you are so inclined, it could even make a great gift. I will share the method to make these snowmen as well as my basic hot chocolate method. You will need marshmallows(medium sized works best), red and green spiral mints, white chocolate, dark/milk/or semisweet chocolate chips, toothpicks, and wax paper.
Cover your workspace with wax paper. (I taped it to the counter) Crush your mints (we did this in a baggy with a meat hammer), and put the pieces on a plate.
Melt your chocolates separately. You won’t need to melt very much because this project doesn’t use much. I did this in the microwave in 30 second increments stirring after every 30 secs until it was melted. Put some unmelted brown chocolate chips separately on a plate.
Dip one side of the marshmallow in either chocolate, and dip into whatever candy. We dipped in white chocolate and then into the mints for a scarf, and dipped into the semisweet chocolate, and then into the unmelted chips for a hat.
Afterwards, use the toothpick and brown chocolate to paint a face onto your marshmallow. I found that this works best if you use the toothpick more like a stamp than a brush.
Once they set, and this only takes about 10 mins or so, you can use them, or wrap and store. Eat them as they are, or put them in hot chocolate, which is what we did.
To make our hot chocolate I heat milk on the stove, and put 2 tsp of unsweetened cocoa and 1 tsp of sugar into the cup. For whatever size mug you use, I would still recommend a 2:1 ratio of cocoa to sugar. I have found that pouring the hot milk on the “mix” works better than heating the milk in the cup, and then adding the mix. If you want peppermint cocoa you can steep a peppermint tea bag in your hot cocoa after you mix, or steep the tea in the milk on the stove to infuse the tea into your cocoa. (I do this with my coffee, along with unsweetened cocoa powder to get a peppermint mocha thing too.) I also like to add a little cinnamon into a really chocolately cocoa. I like making hot cocoa this way because it is simple, inexpensive, and as I have said in previous posts, I like controlling how much sugar goes into my food. Audrey loves this cocoa, and she absolutely loved making these marshmallow snowmen. This is a quick and easy craft that anyone can do! Hopefully you have as much fun as we did!