This all started when I decided to make homemade marshmallow peeps. I have made marshmallows before, so it wasn’t much of a leap to Peeps! Of course, I wanted to do something a little different than just ordinary peeps. This lead to an experiment of sorts with some Star Wars cookie cutters, food dye, & sugar. Let’s just say there’s a reason for the good, the bad, & the ugly in the title! That’s also a reason to do things more than a day before a post!
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Making Marshmallows
Here’s the link to the marshmallow recipe I used. Since I used someone else’s marshmallow recipe, there won’t be a recipe at the bottom for these. I’ve found some other recipes I’d like to try & I may experiment with that later on! The ingredients for marshmallows are fairly basic & you probably have them on hand.
Yoda’s just making sure everything is filled with the force so the marshmallows are nice & light! : ) The only thing you may not have on hand is the plain gelatine & a candy thermometer (not pictured). The link for the gelatine is for a large pack, but you can find a smaller pack in the grocery store next to the Jell-O. The candy thermometer is needed when you boil the sugar, corn syrup, & water.
I’m not going to go through the whole process of marshmallow making since it’s in the recipe. I did use coconut oil versus cooking spray for my pan. Make sure you coat your pan well with the oil, cornstarch, & powdered sugar or it will not come out! Here’s some photos of the marshmallow fluff going into the pan.
Now it has to set up for at least 4 hours. I left mine to set overnight. Darth Vader wasn’t too happy to be put on guard duty!
Just so y’all know, marshmallow making is messy business – there is no licking the beaters!
Star Wars Peeps – Not!
Okay, I’m just going to admit, I don’t have any experience coloring marshmallows! I just had this idea in my head & I thought how hard could it be? Well, it’s not really hard, I just went about it in the wrong way! Now you get to learn from my mistakes. ; )
First, I gathered all my supplies, coffee included! I didn’t know what kind of food dye would work best, so I had liquid, gel, spray, & a food safe marker. Make sure to coat marshmallow cutting utensils with oil & then dip in a cornstarch/powdered sugar mixture, just like the pan.
Everything’s cut out! I had to press really hard to get most of the way through. The embossed tops made this a little tough on the hands.
I coated all the cut edges in plain sugar to cover the stickiness & give it that Peep sugar crunch.
I pressed the embossing side of the cookie cutter into the marshmallow. That’s not too bad!
Using the food safe marker, I traced over the lines to make them stand out. Um, not so great!
The marker tip was very thick and it ended up looking like a kid’s crayon drawing! I would definitely use a finer tipped marker if I tried this again. Next up was C-3PO & I used a paint brush & gel dye to try to highlight the features.
It was okay, but all I had was orange! Then I decided to trace the embossing with the food marker.
Yeah, this is not going well! I decided to do Boba Fett next with the purple gel. His name is Bob to me because I didn’t know who this character was until my son told me!
Darth Vader was next. I used the spray food color which looked more grayish purple than black. I decided to go over it with the food marker again. Somebody please take this food marker away from me!
Now we have Chewbacca, which is just a mess! He’s one of my favorites too!
The worst one was poor Yoda. I tried doing a green colored wash for him, but I forgot that the water should be ice cold. It sort of melted him a little & he’s not really that green. There’s that darn food marker again!
Anyway, here’s the whole sad, sad lot…
They may look like a hot mess, but they’re still tasty! {That sounded a little weird.}
In Hindsight
I may not have had a Pinterest worthy result with this, but I did learn some things!
- Get a bigger variety of food dyes! Also, I need those fine tipped food markers.
- Dye them separately & use a mold. Yep, they have all kinds of marshmallow molds out there!
- Use metal cookie cutters instead of plastic. I learned this with the leftovers!
I had a good bit of marshmallow left over, so I used my smaller. metal cookie cutters to cut out some flowers & butterflies. The sugar got divided & dyed purple & yellow. I used the paint brush & ice cold water to brush the tops, so more sugar would stick to them. These look much better than my Star Wars Peeps!
Well, if nothing else, y’all learned what NOT to do today! Hope y’all are having a wonderful Wednesday!
