Marshmallow Oreo Surprise

Whenever I don’t know what to call a new dessert or recipe I like that I can just add the word “surprise” to the end of it and BOOM! You have a name for your dessert.

I made a few of these red, white and blueberry treats tonight and they were super refreshing and sweet.  I started with a whole Oreo cookie at the bottom (next time I’ll crumble it) added a layer of whip cream and marshmallows, and added rows of blueberries and strawberries. The dishes were small so I couldn’t make ‘stripes’ with the fruit, but I thought they looked nice, and it was a festive dessert to kick of the long weekend with.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone!

Below is the 'surprise' cookie that was at the bottom of the dessert.

Refreshing Ladybugs

Look what is crawling on my windowsill - An edible little ‘ladybug’ appetizer! I found this idea in my Taste of Home magazine and had to try it right away. I took a round cracker spread with cream cheese, cut a cherry tomato in half for the wings, used a black olive half for the head and then stuck chives for the antennae. I waited a little too long to take the picture so my antennae and olive wilted a bit, but his is just adorable. I can see a whole tray of these at my next outdoor gathering this summer.

Easy Toffee Delights

This is a favorite recipe of mine. I hard boil butter and sugar and pour it over a pan of crackers. Put it in the oven for 5 minutes at 475 degrees then remove it from the oven. It will be bubbling still. Then top with semi sweet chocolate morsels…. The heat will melt the morsels and make it easy to spread. Then of course top it with mini marshmallows. When the pan cools you break it similar to brittle and eat the jagged pieces. I made an entire pan, and it only lasts a day before it is gone.  I think I will double the recipe next time as this dessert freezes really well

Happy Columbus Day – Marshmallow Brownies

I woke up this morning and said “Today I am going to bake brownies” and that is exactly what I did. I don’t have a Columbus Day marshmallow to post because I thought these brownies were worthy of posting in lieu of a ship. When I have a three day weekend I like to spend a little time with friends and family, a little time cleaning, a little relaxing and a little (or a lot) of baking, cooking and marshmallow making. I cooked the brownies with the marshmallows and as it was cooking the brownie rose and engulfed part of the mini-marshmallows and continued toasting them until the brownies came out of the oven. I had no idea that they would toast up like this. Here is a before and after.

Before they went into the oven…

When I took them out of the oven 45 minutes later.

Casual Dining

I love a party where the meal is a platter of deli cuts, and bowl or two of pickles and olives. Yum! The bread is always fresh and soft and I can pile on the cheese as high as I want! Top it off with some crispy chips and a soda…and that’s delish! The finale of course: chocolate covered marshmallows.

Feelin' hot hot ...really hot!

I’ve always loved making home made salsa. Sometimes I make it chunky with large pieces of tomatoes and other times I make it like a puree. The salsa of choice lately has been a non-traditional type with tomatoes, cucumber, chopped garlic, vinegar and cilantro. It is refreshing (thanks to the cucumber) and makes the whole kitchen smell great. I’ve also made it with tomatoes, tobasco sauce and corn. Today in search to make spicy salsa vs. refreshing salsa I sought out the habanero pepper. There was definitely confusion at the supermarket between the chili pepper, jalapeño and habanero pepper.   I bought a small vile of just the habanero seeds which claim to be 50 times hotter than the jalapeño pepper. That’s hot. Really hot. The salsa I made was indeed hot, one tiny drop on the corn chip brought out beads of sweat on my forehead.

Let there be peas on Earth

I had some leftover green fondant, and sometimes when you have leftover green fondant you just have to make peas.  So I made peas in a pod and little fondant bowl of peas…this was an easy one... Large green bead fondants put into a hand molded ‘bowl’ and ‘pea pod’.  The chocolate curvature on these two marshmallows is flawless.  (...and I guess you can say these are sweet peas.) Speaking of pea pods, I’m due for some home delivery of groceries. I love food shopping online and the next day the groceries come right to your door. It is worth every penny…especially if your stocking up on heavy items like can goods and bottled water. I’ll be sure to tip the delivery person well and tell them to peas come again soon!

Blurry popcorn

Saturday night=Movie night. Time to relax and enjoy the show…and snack on some tasty chocolate covered marshmallows (or nibble on some mini marshmallows left over from yesterday). I made a fondant popcorn box with popcorn overflowing to go on top of my marshmallow. My picture did not come out too well….after I snapped the shot it seemed crisp in the viewer upon playback, but I see now, that I have uploaded it did not come out very well, but you get the gist of it. Mental note: always take more than one picture of the amazing marshmallow in case the first one is blurry!

The Chipwich

I attended a big cookout and I knew in advance that the ice cream truck was going to be there…so I made ahead of time this yummy fondant chipwich ice cream to go atop my marshmallow to bring with me to the cookout.  This was a tasty little invention by Richard LaMotta... He took yummy ice cream and sandwiched it between two tasty chocolate chip cookies. I was excited to make a replica and I was so excited to arrive and get a snapshot of it with the ice cream truck behind it. It was beautiful weather…not too hot, not too cool. The tinkly music could barely be heard over the band playing and the hustle and bustle of everyone getting their food, but before I sat to eat I took my little marshmallow out and took a picture in front of the truck. It had been so long since I last had a chipwich, I was caught a bit off guard to see that the chipwich has chips on the ice cream, too. That’s better than I had remembered! Yum!

Breakfast...don't skip it!

I recently heard on the radio that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I think I have heard that many times in the past, actually, but for some reason this very important meal, often is left out. I made the tiniest fried egg sunnyside up with two little pieces of toast. Personally, I like my eggs scrambled, but when I make the fondant eggs scrambled it didn’t look so pretty. This sunnyside up delight looks fresh off the pan…a tiny dab of water gave it a glistening real look of eggs. Bon Appetite.

What a peach

There is nothing better than a fresh peach in the fall. The soft skin and super juicy orangy insides.... I created this little fondant peach on top of my marshmallow, and placed it in the warm sun today. I took the red and yellow and swirled the fondants together to get the flavorful tones of a real peach. The forecast is sunshine and peachy all weekend.

Pie in the sky

This is a miniature replica of a pie I made for our towns Pie In the Sky pie contest. I took away with 1^st prize two years in a row.  I’m looking forward to this years fair for some good ol’ fashion home-town fun. I’d like to submit a pie this year that has a marshmallow base, or even a fluff base. I’ll have to think of a good on-site marshmallow to bring with me, too.   I always feel like this fair helps kick off the fall season.  Great detail went into the ‘crust’ of this very miniature dessert, with the lattice pie strips covering the tasty pie ‘filling’. I cut each strip to the length of the marshmallow and wove each one on top of the fondant pie. The chocolate curvature on the marshmallow is smooth and extra thick to help support the heavy pie. After I made this marshmallow I was inspired to move on to baking a delicious blueberry pie with the blueberries I had picked previously and froze.

Labor day relaxation

Hopefully my readers had today off. It is time to relax with a nice glass of tannat wine…I feel thankful to have had the day off today and equally thankful to have a job to go to Tuesday morning. Labor day always signifies the end of summer and back to school ‘season’. It’s always sad to see summer come to and end, but I think we’ll have a few more weeks of warmish weather before the chill sets in.  Todays marshmallow has a bunch of tannat grapes perched on top of the chocolate covered marshmallow. Time to relax……

Ice Cream Twist

I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream...cool vanilla soft serve. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make the cake cone at first, but once I started molding the fondant it came together better than I expected. Then I made a long white snakey piece and swirled it on top of the cone. The sprinkles on the plate are indeed real sprinkles. Love it!  I'm headed out now.... Maybe the ice cream parlor will have 'the twist'...that's my favorite. A perfect blend of half chocolate and half vanilla soft serve twirled up on a cone!



Happy Labor Day Wellington...I mean Weekend

 Labor Day weekend is such a great three day weekend every year.  I feel like it's always a sunny weekend filled with cookouts and barbecues! (is there a difference between a cookout and a barbecue? ...I'm not really sure...) Anyway, I grilled out today and created an awesome Grilled Portabella Wellington to go on top of my candy coated marshmallows.... Then about two hours later made the real Grilled Portabella Wellingtons to grill up! The coated marshmallow has a half ball of portabella fondant, some onion and zucchini pieces and draped with a piece of “melting cheese”. I added a little yellow fondant to the white to give it that off-white delicious cheesy look. This was delicious, although, it was pointed out to me that my Portabella ‘Wellington’ was really just a grilled portabella with vegetables. Apparently, to be called Portabella ‘Wellington’ it needs to be wrapped in puff pastry…wrapping it in the puff pastry is what allows you to call it ‘wellington’. I think it sounded fancy to call them Grilled Portabella Wellingtons even if they weren’t wrapped in puff pastry, but in the end who cares what it’s called it was soooooooooo tasty! I’ll have to try making them and wrapping it in puff pastry next time, as that sounds pretty interesting too. 

Here is what the portabella looked like before I ate it. Rather than putting the cheese on last, I put he cheese on FIRST...................

 

...and then added the veggies. Next time I'll drape some spinach on top too!

Friday night Sushi – Yum! マシュマロ

Adorable. Simply adorable…Little tiny sushi rolls on marshmallows. My favorite kind is the California roll. I think rice, cucumber and avocado is such a great combination in the salty wrap dipped in soy sauce. Sometimes they put little carrots in too.  I don’t even like the taste of an avocado unless it is in sushi. I took the fondant rice, cucumber and a tiny carrot color and rolled them all together, and wrapped it in seaweed colored fondant. I then cut the fondant logs up just like a real sushi roller. 

In case you are wondering this is how you say marshmallow in Japanese マシュマロ

An apple for the teacher…and a banana

Happy back to school, for anyone headed back to the books this month. I created this really cool super red apple, the kind of ‘teachers apple’ shape. It was really easy to mold, and put the green leaf on. Then at the last minute tonight I decided to add a banana to go with it. The banana was more challenging, I had to get the curve just right, and then I painted the brown lines and bruises on with my fine brush and food colorants. I think it looks artistic! If I had more time today I would have added some grapes (which are easy) and some other fruit. Note to self: make a fruit salad marshmallow sometime soon.

Who wants some more s’mores?

I’m sure from last nights post one would wonder ‘why isn’t there a S’mores post?’ Well, there is! I took two teeny tiny pieces of brown fondant cut them with my Showtime #15 knife to make the graham crackers and then put dark brown ‘chocolate’ carefully wedged between two white bead fondant marshmallows. I used my appetizer pick to make the lines and dots on top of the cracker. It’s a little thicker than a real graham cracker, but it is also 100 times smaller than a real one too.  Then I perched it on top of the fire pit just before lighting it (the fire pit, not my sweet marshmallow).  Two more marshmallow post on vacation, then back to the grind.

I got nothing!

Sometimes I just don’t have any material… and today is one of them. It was a long day at work, and lots of preparing for the weekend (many fun things planned) and I couldn’t get into marshmallow mode and think of a marshmallow masterpiece. Then I decided to bust out my old faithful pretzel twist…its super easy (somewhat impressive) and it does not require too many food colorings. I tinted the fondant brown, rolled it out like a snake then took both ends swooped them up…around… and crisscross….topped with tiny cuts of white fondant ‘salt’ and there you have it a pretzel!

Tiny zuchs

I made an amaaaaaaaazing baked zucchini and summer squash dish tonight. I sliced up zucchini and summer squash, tossed it into a baking dish with a little olive oil, threw a few broccoli florets on top and baked it for about 45 minutes. Simple, healthy and delish! I topped a chocolate covered marshmallow with the final dish on top.  I created fondant zucchini and summer ‘squashes’ by rolling my white fondant and wrapping it with green (or yellow for the ss) and then I sliced them up, just like I did for the real veggies only I had to be super careful as I sliced because the candy zuchs and squash were muuuuuuuch smaller. Then I tossed them into a hand-made fondant pan and SNAP! Took a picture….

And here’s there real deal:

You want some…I know you do!