Valentine's Day is tomorrow you guys!!! Whose excited?!?!? Valentine's Day is such a sneaky little holiday. It takes us all a couple months right to recover from the Christmas/New Years mayhem am I right?! so apologies to all you January birthdays who get missed by friends and family because we all have our heads in the 'holiday sand'. I always feel like Valentine's Day sneaks up and then its a mad scramble to pull out some ideas for ways to show those around us that we love them.
Not this year.
This year I was ready and did up a batch of homemade marshmallows dipped in dark chocolate and wrapped them up in a Valentine's Day theme to drop of at our friends places. Here's what I used and how we spread the love.
Supplies:
* Homemade or store-bought sweets of your choice (I'll review the recipe I used below).
* Printed or handmade Valentine's Day tags (I printed mine from here).
* Cellophan Valentine's bags (mine are just from the dollar store, but these ones are similar).
* Stapler or twine to tie your tags to your bags.
The recipe I used is from Butter Baked Goods. Such a great baking book. Their marshmallow recipe especially is out of this world. I would be huge if I let myself make these super easy marshmallows as often as I want them. I also think about them as a topping on so. many. bars. You see how things can escalate for me quickly when it comes to sweets.
And Butter (the bakery in Vancouver) does so many incredible marshmallow flavours. They even share a couple in their cookbook.
I should also note that in the tradition of spreading love at Valentine's Day, I feel that I am spreading more than the sweet treats I make for friends, because I love baking. And that love goes into the things I make and thus onto those who receive it.
And this recipe is also one of the most stunning raw ingredients-to-baked good processes I have ever experienced. You know (for the bakers out there) how humbling and romantic it can be to knead out a roll of sweet bread for cinnamon rolls by hand? Well that's the same sort of feeling I get when beating the ingredients that go into these marshmallows and pouring them into the setting pan. I would love to share the whole recipe with you, but you'll have to buy the cookbook to find out exactly how these come together. Otherwise there are likely common recipes on foodgawker.com, but definitely be clear that they are not like these marshmallows.
And for something so gooey and potentially likely to stick to everything, this recipe is quick and so easy. The whole pan (once it has set for 3 hours or over night) gets lightly pulled loose by a knife and then the whole slab falls in one piece onto a baking sheet dusted with lots of icing sugar. The whole slab then gets covered in icing sugar to take away the sticky consistency, and then cut into 1" squares. Each square is generously rolled in icing sugar and then set aside to devour later, add to hot chocolate, or await its fate with warmed dark chocolate.
Once dipped I rested each marshmallow square on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper to set and prepped my packaging . Once set, I then carefully placed a few marshmallows in each cellophane wrapped bag, addressed my tags, and stapled them to the closed bag. Ready for delivery to all our friends.
Hope your ways of spreading the love are just as sweet as ours are.
- Katie
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