Easy to Make Chocolate/Marshmallow Eggs

Saving on things like Easter candy is not as hard as it might seem. One of my favorites has been the chocolate covered marshmallow eggs. Once upon a time, they were inexpensive. These days there is less money left over for fun stuff and the prices just aren't what they used to be.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon marshmallows at the grocery store. I noticed them because they were not on the candy aisle or on the baking/goody-making aisle but turned up on the juice aisle tucked below the endless rainbow of bottles and mixes. In addition to the regular marshmallows and the minis, I was surprised to find colored ones, flat ones, stacked ones and gigantic ones. No wonder shopping has become stressful. But that's another story and don't get me started on cereal variations.Anyway, and probably because I had just made the chocolate covered peanut butter eggs, I thought I might try coating a few marshmallows. But, by the time I got home, just dunking the marshmallows in chocolate had lost its appeal. "If they were only shaped like eggs", I thought. Hummm. Not as easy as my mental image. Even with the scissors dusted with powdered sugar, they still gathered goo and had to be scraped clean with a knife from time to time. My egg shapes were far from perfect but close enough. I tossed the trimmed marshmallows in a bag with a little powdered sugar and it kept them from sticking together perfectly. My hands were tired from trimming with the sticking scissors after a bakers dozen, and since this was a trial endeavor, I stopped there.

With so few to coat, I microwave-melted only a single square each of chocolate and vanilla Almond Bark and added solid shortening for thinning, according to the package directions. Dipping was easier than ever because I stabbed the marshmallows with a small skewer (even a toothpick would work). Then, just spooned the coating over. One thing I did discover was the need to tap off as much of the extra powdered sugar as possible. Anyway, the entire project was super simple and incredibly inexpensive. It would be a fun activity with children regardless of the season.

One of these days, when I have endless hours to search, I'll try to find my old West Virginia recipe for making the real chocolate coating which, as I recall, included paraffin. In the meantime, the Almond Bark works great and nothing could be easier.