Hot Chocolate on a Stick

Meredith
I originally stumbled upon this recipe for Hot Chocolate on a Stick and shot Laura an email saying I might make these as gifts this year for the office folks. She took it a step further and found a blogger (Foodie with Family) who’d made the recipe AND added homemade marshmallows. AND then convinced me to blog the whole thing. So here goes!

The fudge making itself- VERY easy. And very tasty. I snuck in a teaspoon of coffee extract at the very last stage, but to be honest I didn’t notice it in the end product. The marshmallow making - I definitely had my doubts. I’d never worked with plain old Knox gelatin before nor had I even used the whisk attachment on my stand mixer. Turns out that whisk attachment made the marshmallows for me! Once I poured the mixture into my pan to set, I swirled in some red and green food coloring to make the marshmallows a little festive.

Fast forward to the next night and the assembly of these things. Step one went just fine and I cut the fudge into 36 cubes (using a ruler of course) and arranged on top of little squares of Christmas cards I’d cut. The marshmallow cutting went just fine too – I’m still finding powdered sugar in random places in my kitchen though. Then I stuck the lollipop stick in, yadda yadda yadda...

All in all the assembly and packing wasn’t a huge deal. It’s just that there were 36 of them. To be stuck, packaged and tagged. And ribboned. And I started the whole process at 8pm- which means because I’m slightly particular about presentation, I was finally done around midnight. The fun part was handing them out the next few days and hearing the oohs and ahhs.

It wasn’t until late Sunday night after Christmas when I was all snowed in and cozy that I got to actually TASTE the Hot Chocolate on a Stick. So good. Just really really good. Now why didn’t I save myself more than one??

Laura
Don’t let Meredith fool you! She still has some left over. Moving right along...

These treats were easy to make and so much fun to give away. I really loved the idea of giving away a little something to people that I might not have normally given a gift to. I didn’t swirl any food coloring in my marshmallows. The hot chocolate was really easy to make... easy like fudge. The marshmallows were surprisingly a non-issue. I was scared of the gelatin. So much so that I had decided that I might just buy marshmallows for this recipe instead. Ever the boss, Meredith put the kabosh on that quickly. Don’t tell her, but I'm glad she did.

Lots of people asked for the recipe. That’s always a nice compliment. And honestly, it felt good giving away something so unique that I made. It was different enough to set itself apart from all the cookies, etc that go around this time of year.