Little Miss Mallow

Have you ever had the fortune of being left with someone else's child to watch over? You get that sense of responsibility knowing you can spoil this kid without having any of those real long term consequences like medical bills because they ate too much or dental bills because of what they ate. Everything in moderation and you'll be fine is what I've always gone by. Well, that’s far beside the point I'm trying to make. Lets tap the brakes here for a bit and state that I am not going advocate doing anything to harm or emotionally scare anybody; no, my sense of humor is entertaining someone while entertaining myself a little at their expense.

If you haven't been to our website, www.miamallows.com, tisk tisk tisk. We'll wait here while you wander over . . . For everybody else, I'll keep going. That cute little girl pictured on our website is my niece. A very talented friend was kind enough to draw her up from a picture we had lying around and she looked so well drawn that we knew it was perfect for the site. She's an energetic girl who looooves marshmallows, making her our favorite niece, naturally. Every now and again we goof around and she takes the same ribbings we all took when we were her age and she's pretty quick to know when something is up. A while back, when she was really on a marshmallow kick and we decided it was time for her to taste a new flavor and gauge her reaction as a forerunner to a possible new flavor.

After chomping down two chocolate covered bite-size mallow squares using a skewer stick, she took a thirty second break and ran over to the couch to see what all the laughter was about. I think she later figured out that the conversation humming over her head was actually about her and the laughing was the ruse to unseat her from her command perch. While she was away, we took the opportunity to run her skewer into a bit of country sausage that was sitting one bowl over; a leftover from our just-finished dinner. Moving quickly, we replaced the now-loaded skewer back in its place before a tiny hand led its owner back to take care of some unfinished business. As cute as a button, she picked up the skewer, rolled her eyes toward the television, unrolled her tongue, and proceeded to lick off what she thought was chocolate. After the third lick, and the fifth set of eyes that had locked onto her in the moment of dead silence, I think she finally figured it out!

Her face focused as her mind began to work out the mystery of the not so sweet marshmallow that had slipped in right under her nose, literally. And here, we'll skip over her half-minute dramatic moment of diva-ism and subsequent tantrum and finally reach the point I had been trying to make and that is: marshmallows are in fact a useful multipurpose means of entertaining a child; results will vary.

A full 98% of the time, kids love our marshmallows (the remaining 2% are fibbing we believe), were it not for loving parents and mischievous adults who remember looking up the chain of command and realizing how far it went up and realizing it takes a lifetime to climb even in your own home.

Next time, we'll discuss marshmallows in the quantum mechanics world and how flavored ones may just disprove String Theory.

The sausage on a stick marshmallow.

Etsy Front Page

I was on the front page tonight, I think from about 10:00 pm to 11:15pm EST.

It felt great! I didn't find out until the last few minutes, but I loved it! Thank you, utilemud!

I'm also in the gift guide for wedding invites and favors: http://www.etsy.com/gift-guides/170

Thanks everyone, for featuring me on blogs and treasuries!

:)

The Apple Results

We've finally gotten a free minute to look over your comments on our blog. Thanks to all of you who have put in a little blurb. We appreciate everybody taking their time to post. Out of your responses, we have randomly selected two folks who will receive a sample of our signature chocolate apple. If you’re name wasn’t selected this time around, another go-round will happen again a little later on. Our goal is to offer these sweet chocolate dipped apples on Etsy very soon. There are other ideas that we’re still dreaming up.

A Newtonian Experiment

Last week we snuck in a little blurb about an experiment we were interested in running and those of you who suffered through the entire blog, hopefully, found it and posted a message. If you did, great! We are going to notify a few randomly selected folks to get their mailing addresses and here's why.
Our chocolate covered apples have always been a fan favorite amongst customer families. They are huge, sweet, and a little tangy. That’s good because a family can sit around, slice this monster up and everybody gets a serving or two. Evenings with friends, birthday parties, and anybody who is planning on visiting their friends and families have really taken to the idea of showing up with our apples. Now, after a few requests for direct delivery, we have begun to toy with the idea of shipping our apples all over the place, you know, to help end world cravings. The problem is, we won't sell anything that needs shipping unless we're sure it’s going to survive and remain pristine until it leaves this world, one slice or bite at a time.
At no expense to you, we would like to send out a single-boxed chocolate dipped apple for you to evaluate. The goal is to get feedback sent directly back to us about the condition it arrived in, along with some other info that we'll include when we contact you via e-mail. Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to add to our listings on Etsy and beyond to include chilled chocolate dipped apples, just in time for the hot summer.
Again, thank you all for your interest in our little mallow world.

The rocky road

Ever wonder how many ways you can prepare a marshmallow to be devoured? If you answered Yes, that's wonderful. We never did. That is until we started making them, then making lots of them, then dreaming about them, and finally blogging about them.

What we've found is that there are endless ways to cut, color, flavor, and accessorize marshmallows. Some ideas have come from our customers, who are quite crafty. The most interesting idea we came away with recently was a suggestion that we incorporate or somehow theme a marshmallow after one of America's favorite ice creams, Rocky Road.

A challenge was at hand and we've been known to try different flavors whenever we have the time. How successful are we, that depends I guess on whether you like spicy, sour, or flowery mallows. I can't count any of our experiments out, somebody someday will ask us with a grin if we've tried this or that and we'll be there nodding. For our RR, we had to incorporate the main flavors of the ice cream without actually using ice cream and after a bucket, err, hour of research, we came up with a unique take on the dessert.

First, we started with a milk chocolate flavored marshmallow, although using a darker, bitter chocolate is on the "when we find a chocoholic . . ." list. Next, the nuts we went with were walnuts, because they seemed to stand out well and spread evenly and deeply throughout when mixed into a fresh batch of marshmallow. Afterwards, well, we were just kidding ourselves by going light on the chocolate; who doesn't looooove chocolate. A quick reach across the counter, a twist of a lid, and a fist full of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips were sailing into the mix. We relished stirring that pot like an eager child waiting for grandma to stop scraping the cookie dough bowl.

What we created that day left us feeling as though we caught lightning in a bottle.

We haven't taken pictures to post and even when we do, I don't recommend you lick the screen, it won't taste quite the same. What I will say is that the response has been very positive so far. Soon, we'll be offering these little crunchy, smooth, chocolatey nuggets and we think you will have one of those "wavy screen" flashbacks to us the next time you pick up a candy bar. Thank you all for following us on our little mallow path. Although we already have our Rocky Road taste-testers, we would still like to select a few of you for a little audience participation. A few interested folks will be randomly selected to do a little experiment with our signature apple. That’s about all I can divulge until a future blog, sooooooooo, if you're interested in joining us (its free, both joining and the experiment), please comment on the blog, and I will notify you by July 7th, 2009, if you are selected.