Anything But Bingo

It is the half-term school holiday this week in Scotland so writing this week's post has been a challenge of time management. As we are having a fundraising Bake Sale at work this week I also have cooking to do, so I have tied this blog and baking together and am showing you how to make chocolate covered marshmallows. Time will tell if they are a good seller at a Bake Sale but they are definitely pretty easy to make, look good and I'm sure your grandchildren / children / Halloween trick or treaters will bite your hand off for them.

This is a perfect activity to do with a full range of abilities. There are plenty of different aspects to the task for members of a group to be involved or for a couple to share. Melted chocolate should never get hot (or you have ruined it!) so working with chocolate is also a safe activity.

You need:

Marshmallows (a 200g bag made 10 chocolate sticks)

250g Chocolate (I used milk chocolate chips, you can also use bars of chocolate broken into pieces)

A variety of cake sprinkles

Bamboo skewers

Greaseproof paper or a non-stick baking sheet

Method:

• Thread 3 marshmallows onto a skewer. The skewers are quite long so I broke off the end I had threaded them over as it becomes quite sticky.

• Melt the chocolate. If you melt chocolate properly (tempering) you will get a shiny smooth result. Luckily there is an easy way to temper chocolate using either a microwave or a bowl over simmering water (bain marie). Put all your chocolate in a bowl (remembering to break bars into small pieces). Melt very gently; over simmering water or 30secs at a time in the microwave, stirring regularly. Once half the chocolate is melted (as my photo below) remove the chocolate from the heat / microwave and continue stirring until all the chocolate has melted. This can take a few minutes. You should end up with smooth runny chocolate. If the chocolate is still too think to run off the spoon heat VERY gently again for just 30 seconds and stir again

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• You can now start to cover your marshmallows in chocolate. I found this easiest to do by holding the skewer over the bowl of chocolate and spooning the chocolate over the marshmallows. Once they are completely covered you now need to let all the excess drip away. I helped this along by scooping some off the underneath of the marshmallows as they dripped.

• Then cover your chocolate with sprinkles. Again, I did this by holding the marshmallows over the bowl of sprinkles and shaking them over and / or using my hands to sprinkle. If you haven't removed the excess chocolate you will find it drips into your sprinkles bowl and you are then in a mess! The only unsuitable sprinkles I discovered were the heavier 'smarties type' which slid off the chocolate.
• Place your finished marshmallows on a piece of greaseproof paper or non-stick sheet to harden; it only takes about 10 minutes.

• You can then either serve / give them away as they are or wrap them up and add a bow!!

• If you have any left-over chocolate pour it onto another piece of greaseproof paper, add sprinkles and let it harden into a giant chocolate button.

I hope you will have a go at making these. If you are planning them as a Halloween treat many of the high street shops have Halloween themed sprinkles, or you could make them nearer Christmas with festive decoration.