This post is a little different than any of our previous post. Today, not only is this the first post from a guest contributor but it’s also a post about the trials and tribulations of a first time marshmallow designer.

A few weeks back I announced that we were accepting submissions and I was thrilled when Dina from Deliciously Darling Events sent me her post. I’ve had readers tell me they’ve attempted making marshmallow pops in the past but they’ve never gone into detail with me as to what their experience was like. I was excited to see that’s exactly what Dina’s post was about and how much my upcoming book will help her get better and faster at decorating marshmallows.So without further due….. I am delighted to share with you Dina’s experience:

In Dina’s Words:

“Hello everyone! I’m so excited to share my marshmallowy adventure with you! I have been so fortunate enough to have received an order from The Marshmallow Studios for my child’s 5th Muppet Birthday! I was seriously blown away by what Alejandra created and my son was beyond thrilled. So when it came time to plan my second child’s birthday I was sure I wanted to include some marsmallow pops. I love the fact that Alejandra was so enouraging for me to try to make the marshmallow pops myself. I can’t wait to get my hands on her book to learn all the awesome marshmallow techniques but for these pops – I seriously just winged it to create these Microphone pops.

Armed with a bunch of bags of marshmallows and one huge bag of sugar, I started my adventure! First thing’s first – I had to figure out my layout. I knew I wanted to create a marshmallow so I found that one jumbo Jet-Puffed marshmallow (cut in half) and a 1/3 of a marshmallow stick sort of resemble a microphone. I also bought a bag of the Jet-Puffed Stackers and a regular sized bag of Marshmallows. Once I figured out my layout and my color scheme I then set out to make the colored sugar. Actual colored sugar crystals are fairly expensive and I knew I needed a lot of them so I decided to make my own. I poured about 2 cups of sugar into a food processor and then added a huge squirt of gel food coloring and pulsed to make my color. For black, I clearly should have used more because the color turned out a bit on the grey side as opposed to black. I ran out of gel color and used liquid on the green sugar – probably not the best as I experienced a lot more color clumping then if I used the gel food coloring. Note to self: do not leave the food processor running – the sugar will literally turn into powdered sugar!

Once I had my sugar colors made, I let them dry a little bit as I cut my marshmallow pieces to where I needed them to be. First – I cut the jumbo marshmallow in half to create the circle for the microphone then cut the marshmallow poles into 3 pieces. My mother in law and I then proceeded to carefully wet each marshmallow with water using a small food safe paintbrush. Needless to say this was really tedious and we totally missed parts of the marshmallow completely! After the marshmallow has been covered in sugar it is not a good idea to rewet it to try and cover those holes with sugar. It becomes one big goopy mess. Being the extremely impatient baker I am – I began dunking the marshmallows completely in water (something tells me this wasn’t the best technique) then quickly rolling them in the colored sugar. The marshmallows ended up being fully covered in sugar but then looked like they were crusting over! I know – perhaps too much water? LOL. Despite my apprehension, I kept dunking marshmallows and rolling them into the sugar. I actually found that it is way less messy if you have a partner. My mother-in-law was the marshmallow dunker and I was the sugar roller. It was actually so cool to look at the trays of sugared marshmallows once they were done. I ignored the fact that the soggy marshmallows were crystallizing the sugar and tried to reassure myself that the marshmallows would eventually soften back up.

I let my tray of sugared marshmallows “cure” about 1 hour. In the meantime, I made my royal icing batch. I split the batch into 3 colors and filled my pastry bags. Now on to the fun part! The assembly and decoration. Through my very brief and minimal research, I read that if you dunk your skewer into water and then slide it into the marshmallow that it goes through “like butta” so that is what we did. I wet the skewer end in between each marshmallow piece that was put on. Once my marshmallow skewer was assembled it was time to decorate with the royal icing. My first few attempts had me worried. I felt like the royal icing was not sticking to the marshmallows because of the sugar and was rolling off. Don’t freak out at this point like I did. I found that eventually once the royal icing had hardened enough that the design will stick to the sugared marshmallow. Now – please bare in mind, I have no idea what I’m doing at this point and I’m terrible with royal icing.

A few hours later my creations dried enough to be bagged and ribboned. Color me surprised when my marshmallows softened back up and didn’t taste like a horrible sugared brick when bitten into :). Needless to say, it was a really fun afternoon of marshmallow making. My kids even got in on the fun and made their own little sugar covered marshmallows (which didn’t get a chance to make it on to a stick but directly in their mouths). After all is said and done, I was so thrilled with how they turned out for my first attempt and I’m really looking forward to getting The Marshmallow Studio’s new book so I can learn all about the best way to make these pops.”

PLEASE NOTE: The above post from Dina does not reflect the views, opinions, methods, or procedures of The Marshmallow Studio.