Hi, we’re Chica and Jo! Dot asked us to share our idea with you for chocolate-covered marshmallow treats. These treats are a fantastic snack for any occasion and are a big hit for holidays, birthday parties, family dinners, or just a rainy day inside with the kids.

Jo was inspired to make these treats after having something similar at Disney World, when she had chocolate-covered marshmallows on a stick. With some quick experimenting, we found that they were very easy to create and customize at home. Here are the simple steps as well as a fun idea for what to use as the holder.

First, line a baking sheet or large tray with parchment paper. You’ll be putting the treats on here later to cool, so you want to have a nice non-stick surface ready.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave in a tall, skinny mug so that you can easily dip the marshmallows down into the chocolate. For the chocolate, we recommend using Wilton brand candy melts, which melt easily and cool to a nice, glossy finish that stays hard at room temperature. They are also available in a variety of colors. One bag of these candy melts will make about 12 marshmallow treats.

For the handles of the treats, you’ll use sturdy plastic “crazy” straws that you can get at most grocery stores. The straws are the perfect size to hold two marshmallows, they look really cute, and the kids can wash them and use them as straws afterwards or you can wash them and reuse them another time. Put two large marshmallows on the end of each crazy straw. For an extra yummy twist, look for chocolate flavored marshmallows in the store.

Now for the candies! You can use anything that’s colorful and tiny. We like to use mini M&M’s and sprinkles, but you can use whatever you like or whatever matches the occasion. Pour the candies onto plates or shallow bowls to make them easy to access.

Dip each marshmallow-covered straw into the melted chocolate to coat it and let the excess chocolate drain back into the mug. Then add the candies by holding the marshmallow over the plate and sprinkling the candies on while rotating the marshmallow to be sure you get all sides. For lightweight candies (like sprinkles) you can just roll the
marshmallow in the candy to coat it.

Once the chocolate is covered with candies, put the treat on the parchment paper to cool and harden. When the chocolate is set, store the treats in an airtight container in a cool location. You can also wrap each treat with a little cellophane bag and tie it with a ribbon.

We hope you enjoy these marshmallow treats, and for more fun project ideas (for crafts, food, and fun) please visit us at www.ChicaAndJo.com

Dot here again… do go visit Chica & Jo — tons of great ideas and how-to’s. I love this idea — This could be a fun idea to do with the kids when they are getting bored at Grandma’s… or wouldn’t these be fun wrapped in cellophane for kids party favors, too? Thanks, guys!

This is a favorite lemon pie of mine… It’s dense, rich and very lemon-y. Lemon Chess, closer to lemon bars than lemon meringue. These make a lovely hostess gift (bake the pie in a pretty pie plate for your recipient to keep)… or make your own ‘gift set’ with lemons, the recipe, and some gear to make it (recommendations below).
(UPDATE: Get the recipe as a PDF here)

1. How to Make a Lemon Pie: Ingredients (2 pies), 2. Zesting Lemon*, 3. Lemon Pie: Ingredient Prepwork, 4. Juicing Lemons**, 5. Whisk Melted Butter, Sugar, 6. Add Eggs, 7. Whisk well to combine… ready for pie shells!, 8. Place crust pastry in 2 pie plates***, 9. Crimp Edges, 10. Continue around Pan, crimping edges, 11. Split into the 2 pie shells., 12. Lemon Pie, all done.

Gear Recommendations:
*Nothing zests a lemon quicker or better than a Microplane. I love mine.
**The nifty little juicer I have is convenient- It has a measurements in the cup so you can see how much you have, and it has other attachments, like the egg separator I used in the Eggnog recipe.
***I love my Pyrex pie plates. They cook evenly and seem to do much better than metal.

Recipe:

(Can double and make 2 pies—freeze one*)
1 ½ lemons (3/8 cup lemon juice)
1 ½ cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
3 eggs
dash salt
unbaked pastry shell, 9”

Place pastry in pie pan and crimp edges. (If you’re using storebought pie dough, let it get to room temperature first for ease of unrolling)
Have lemon at room temperature or soak in warm water (to get more juice).
Zest rind (note, you just want the yellow on top, not the white pith, so zest shallowly).
Ream out or squeeze lemon , measure juice.
Add sugar, melted butter, eggs, salt. Mix with wire whip until smooth. Mix in grated rind or just put it in the pie shell. Pour rest over.
(For making 2 pies, I used a measuring cup to alternate scoops into each pie shell)
Bake at 325 about 45 minutes.
Makes one large pie.

*If you want to freeze a pie, just bake the pie, then cool it. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap, cover with foil, label, and freeze. Thaw in the refrigerator before serving.

For extra prettiness and festive holiday cheer: Cut a snowflake out of tissue paper slightly smaller than the top of the pie (or use a paper doily). Place on top of the pie and sift/shake powdered sugar on top. Remove paper, and you have a pretty wintery design! NOTE: Do this right before giving/presenting/serving, so the powdered sugar doesn’t sink in and disappear.

Pastry: For this, I cheated and used prepackaged all ready pie crust from the refrigerated section. But making your own isn’t hard, here’s the recipe:

Oil Pastry:
Quick, easy, & healthier

2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp salt
½ cup corn, canola, or light olive oil
¼ cup cold milk

Fluff flour & salt together with fork. Pour salad oil and milk into measuring cup (do not stir). Add all at once to flour mixture.
Stir lightly with fork until it forms a ball. Divide into 2 parts.
Flatten one ball slightly. Sprinkle both sides of dough with extra flour. Roll between 2 floured sheets of wax paper. Peel off top sheet and invert over 9” pie pan. Continue according to recipe.
The extra ball can be used for a top crust, to make 2 pies, or frozen for use later.

Recipe: Alton Brown’s Uncooked Eggnog Version. Go over there and print out his recipe, as I didn’t recopy all of the instructions over here. Just consider this a user guide!

1. Prepare ingredients
* 4 egg yolks
* 1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon (i forgot to include in this pic)
* 1 pint whole milk
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 3 ounces bourbon
* 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
* 4 egg whites

Go ahead and separate your eggs. I happen to have a little egg separator, 2. separate eggs but it’s not overly difficult to do 3. by hand (just use the shell to strain most of the white, then cup the yolk in your fingers to let the rest drain between them
4. Here we have the ingredients again, all prepped (though I should have grated the nutmeg by this point too: (ingredients),
First I whipped the egg whites. Place the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat to soft peaks. With the mixer still running gradually add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form:5. Egg white, pre whipped, 6. whipped egg whites (soft peaks), 7. whipped egg whites hard peaks, set aside
Now for the yolks: 8. Yolks, 9. whipping till lighten in color,
Yet another time when the Microplane comes in handy: 10. Grating nutmeg (I forgot to do it earlier) By the way, whole nutmeg lasts much longer than pre-ground, and is worth the effort.
Add the sugar to the yolks, continue to beat until it is completely dissolved: 11. yolks with sugar added,
Add remaining ingredients, then whisk back in the whites: 12. Add Milk, cream, and nutmeg, bourbon, 13. whisk back in whites,
Ready for enjoyment! 14. A pitcher full, 15. MMMM… yum, enjoy!

If you want to try the cooked version, it’s very similar to the uncooked, so refer above. I’ve documented the extra steps here.

After beating egg yolks and adding sugar, 1. Heat Milk, Cream, Nutmeg just to boil, 2. Temper by slowly adding the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture, 3. Return to stove and cook til 160 deg
Add bourbon, refrigerate.
When chilled, you can incorporate eggwhites as in the uncooked version.

Based off some of the comments on the Food Network site, that the eggwhites were superflous, I decided to leave the eggwhites out of the cooked version I did. However I did really enjoy the lightness they brought to the Version 1, so in the future i’d recommend.

Instructions and Recipe below the pics:

Ingredients:
2 Sticks butter, softened.
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 c all-purpose flour (fluffed with fork or sifted)
1 teas baking soda
1 teas salt
3 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 c raisins (or instead, 1 1/2 c chocolate chips & 2 cups chopped pecans)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.
Cream butter, sugars, and vanilla until light and fluffy
Add eggs and beat well.
Combine flour, baking soda, and salt (I like to sift them together)
Add to creamed mixture
Add oatmeal and raisins (We did this in the much loved Kitchen Aid mixer, but if the mixture is too think, stir in by hand.)
Drop onto a slightly greased cookie sheet. (a disher makes this really neat and easy)
Bake at 375 degrees F for 8-10 minutes, until light brown.
Remove from oven, and transfer to cooling racks.
Lick beaters!
Eat warm cookies!

(And if you’re concerned about small children and the joy of licking the beaters vs the tiny risk of salmonella, use pasteurized eggs.)

Related:
All Holiday 08 Posts
Make a Blueberry Pie
Make Fancy Stacked Christmas Tree Cookies

Tomorrow:
More entrants in the Dabbled Holiday Contest. Get yours in now!
… and Don’t forget to Enter your Christmas Card Designs in our mini Art Contest.

Stumble It!

When we got to our thanksgiving destination, they were making these, so I had to grab the camera and document the process for you guys. And of course I got roped into doing a few myself too!

The instructions are below the How To picture below. Click through to see larger.

Directions:
1. Make/bake your sugar cookies ahead of time. You’ll need Star shaped cookie cutters in 4 sizes. You’ll need 8 cookies per tree, 2 in each size. Here’s some star shaped cookie cutters– hey, you can always reuse for the 4th of July!
IMPORTANT: Your cookie dough recipe should not have any leavening in it (ie no baking powder or baking soda), so the cookies bake flat–here’s one.

2. Icing – Use green food coloring to tint your icing green. We used a buttercream I think, but it really shouldn’t matter, as long as the icing dries hard. Ice the largest cookie first, then ice the second of the same size. Immediately press the iced cookie on top of the first one, centering the points of the stars between the ones of the previous layer, so they do not overlap. Continue building the tree in this manner, with successively smaller stars. Mine were messier than Jennifer’s, hers are the prettier ones! But exactness isn’t needed, just make sure you ice the tips since that’s what shows.

3. Decoration – You can decorate any way you like, but we used packaged royal icing flowers, which you can purchase from a cake supply shop or online. Just google royal icing flowers. Just press one on top while the top star’s icing is still wet. We had some sugar stars we considered standing up on the top of the tree, but we didn’t try that while I was there.

4. Trunk. the original idea didn’t include a trunk, but the boxes they were packaging them in for gifts were tallish, and they decided the tree needed to be taller. Hence, a stem made from a mini Reese’s Cup and glued on with icing! Mmmm always nice to add chocolate anyway, right?

5. Packaging – They used clear acetate favor boxes ordered online, tied with a gold ribbon. Let the tree dry thoroughly before transferring to packaging. Use icing to ‘glue’ the tree to the bottom of the box.

Related:
Wedding Cake Cookies Tutorial
Blueberry Pie Tutorial

Hope you find this useful! If you try it, be sure to let me know…
Later this week we’re doing Oatmeal cookies, so Stay Tuned! (Don’t miss anything – Subscribe!)

Instructable HERE!

So, my dear sweet adorable handy hubby requested a pie for his thanksgiving luncheon at work. And after suggesting the many fine pies available at our local Publix, I relented and made one. Don’t be intimidated, this is really as “easy as pie” to do, so put this one in your toolbox for friends & family events coming up. Here’s a recipe and tutorial! (Recipe and instructions below the pic)

Dot’s Mom’s Blueberry Pie:

Ingredients
Pastry for top & bottom of 9 in pie *
4 c fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen ones from my parents haul this summer)
3/4 c sugar
3 Tbs flour
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (doh! no fresh lemons on hand today, so I left out)
dash salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 Tbs butter
*Although it’s certainly not that hard to make your own piecrust pastry, I cheated here and used the all-ready type rolled pastry you can find in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, near the cookie dough rolls and biscuit dough tubes.

(row 1)Combine sugar,flour, spices and peel in a large bowl
Toss with blueberries
Line 9″ pie pan with pastry.
Pour blueberry mixture into shell
(row 2)Sprinkle with Lemon Juice, Dot with butter.
Top with top crust**
Crimp crust edges together, squeezing with your fingers.
(row 3)To avoid too brown crust edges, use aluminum foil to make little strips to cover the edges of the pie. (Unless you have a pie crust shield like this or this)
Sprinkle with xtra sugar and cinnamon.
(row 4)Bake 375 for 35-40 minutes (reduce heat if needed to keep crust from over browning)
Pie is done with nicely tan on top, and blueberry juice is oozing through the holes in the top. Mine took about 15 min longer than the recommendation above.

**For my top crust I used a handy cheat – basically a giant cookie cutter that gives the appearance of a lattice crust. You can do anything you want here (if you use a solid sheet, be sure to prick the top of the pie), including making a ‘real’ lattice top, or using cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

If you click through to flickr, the picture above contains notes explaining all the steps – a one stop recipe!

EDIT: You can get a Fox Run Lattice Pie Top Cutter HERE!

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