Sno-Balls, or Snowballs, are a type of snack cake made by Hostess that feature a chocolate cake surrounded by a marshmallow frosting then rolled in coconut to give it a fluffy, snowy look. Like other snack cakes made by the company, the chocolate cake centers are creme-filled. Sno Balls were introduced in 1947 as all-white creations, with white frosting and white coconut over a chocolate cake. To jazz them up, cream filling was added to the cakes in 1950, and at some point the company started tinting the coconut topping pink. It wasn’t exactly snowball-like, but the color certainly was eye catching. I only had these cakes a few times as a kid (drawn in by the color, I admit!). They looked good, and sounded good, but never tasted as good as I hoped they would . I decided to put together a homemade version so I could have the treats, fresh and tasty, any time.
I started out with a plain chocolate cupcake. The packaged cakes seem to use a moist sponge cake, but I wanted something that would be more tender and would have more chocolate flavor. I ended up opting for a fairly straightforward chocolate cake, using cocoa powder (as opposed to melted chocolate) to keep the cake light and the flavor deep, without being overwhelming to the frosting and topping. Once the cakes were baked, I cut out the centers to prepare to fill them. I found the cake to be very easy to work with and it held up really well during handling for filling and frosting.
For the frosting, I used a marshmallow-like icing that involves cooking sugar to soft ball stage and streaming it in to beaten egg whites. The finished consistency is somewhere between marshmallow and meringue, and is very similar to the frosting used on the packaged cakes, but with a much better flavor. It didn’t spread on as smoothly as a buttercream would have, but did smooth out nicely when the cakes were rolled in coconut and created much better representation of what the “real” cake should be. I used the frosting for the cake filling, too, and flavored it with a little bit of vanilla extract and coconut extract. The coconut is optional, but since there is no shredded coconut in the filling, it gives the whole thing a bit more flavor if you use it.
Leave the cakes out for at least 2 hours after being frosted and rolled in coconut to give the icing a chance to dry and set up. It will still be light and tender when you bite into it, but it will hold its shape much better than it did when wet. These can be stored for about a day or maybe a day and a half, but they’ll go quickly, so don’t worry about having leftovers.
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A few months ago, Trader Joe’s jumped on the gourmet marshmallow bandwagon and started selling peppermint marshmallows for the holiday season. They were pretty awful – overly sugary and aggressively minty – and it’s no surprise that they didn’t last long. Because of my previous experience, I was a bit apprehensive about trying out their new Vanilla Marshmallows when I saw them this week. My love of marshmallows prevailed over my doubts and I bought a package to try.
Soft and with an almost meringue-like foamy texture, these marshmallows are worlds away from their previous efforts. They are not too sweet and have a very subtle vanilla flavor. In fact, if someone had told me they were “creme soda marshmallows” I think that I would have believed it. They’re not quite up to my favorite homemade marshmallows, of course, but the ingredient list reads almost exactly the same, so they’re pretty similar. The biggest difference is that they don’t seem to be quite as dense/firm as my homemade ‘mallows, although I suspect that all it will come to is that the marshmallows will melt faster in hot chocolate than mine. Otherwise, with 16 marshmallows in a package, they’re not a bad buy. They toast pretty well and I think I’d rather use them for summertime s’mores than regular store-bought marshmallows.
I have a little bit of a thing for Peeps. Part of the reason I like them is that the sugar-coated marshmallows are fun to eat. The other part is that they’re simply too cute to resist. Peeps were the very first thing that sprang to my mind when I spotted Wilton’s Mini Bunny Cake Pan because the shape of each cake cavity is almost identical to that of a bunny-shaped Peep.
The nonstick pan has only six bunnies, each of which is a bit smaller than a regular cupcake mold. The bunnies turn out to be about 4-inches long and 1 inch (or so) high. You’ll have to play around with the exact number of bunny cakes you can bake with a regular recipe, but Wilton predicts that you can expect to make 18. Be sure to let the pan cool well before refilling.
To get the look of a Peep for your cakes, use a white cake recipe, white frosting and buy some yellow and purple sanding sugars. Coat the baked cakes in frosting and dip into the sugars, making sure to cover the sides and top completely. When set out on a serving tray, they’ll look just like their marshmallow counterparts!
These are the best rice krispie treats that I’ve ever had.
That said, I don’t eat rice krispie treats all that often, but every time I have had them they have been consistently tasty. Much like the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe, almost everyone has used the original and it’s popular because it makes a very good product. But also as with chocolate chip cookie recipes, I can’t resist playing around a little bit with things to try and make something even better.
This recipe was inspired by a photo I saw in an Australian food magazine that used a mixture of plain rice krispies (a.k.a. rice bubbles) and chocolate rice krispies (such as cocoa krispies) to make a similar snack. I don’t care for the artificial taste of those chocolate breakfast cereals and decided to see if I could work out a better recipe, using real chocolate and cocoa powder to dress up the treats.
I added melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder into half of my rice krispie mixture and made the white half to rice krispie back-of-the-box specifications, adding only a bit of vanilla to make sure there was a nice contrast between light and dark. I tossed a handful of mini chocolate chips into the chocolate batch for good measure, as well. Once the mixtures were ready, I doled out spoonfuls into lined muffin tins, creating a layer of chocolate topped by a layer of vanilla in a single-serving size. Muffin liners are really useful here because they don’t stick to the treats and make the treats very easy to get out of the pan. As an additional bonus, they keep the treats from sticking to anything else (including eachother) if you’re going to pack them up in a lunch bag or take them along on a road trip.
The chocolate was surprisingly rich and cut the usual sweetness of the plain vanilla side slightly, giving the treat a nice twist. I love the color contrast between the two sides, too. Grownups can have after-school snacks too, can’t they?
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Ever since I first started making homemade marshmallows with a Thomas Keller recipe a few years ago, I’ve been hooked. I can’t count the batches of marshmallows I’ve made or the cups of hot chocolate that I’ve dunked them in. Plain vanilla is unquestionably my favorite, but even a marshmallow-lover like myself gets a little bored once in a while. It didn’t take me long to start to experiment with different marshmallow flavors and, after my less-than-satisfying experience with the Trader Joe’s peppermint marshmallows that I tried earlier this month, I thought I would share my own formula for peppermint marshmallows.
These ‘mallows have a much subtler mint flavor than the TJ’s versions, and have the light and fluffy texture that you would expect to find in a top marshmallow. The vanilla mellows the mint flavor somewhat and gives the whole confection a very well-rounded taste. I like them plain and love them in hot chocolate.
If you prefer a stronger mint flavor – in other words, if you want something really intense – feel free to increase the amount of peppermint extract by a half teaspoon or so. Keep in mind, however, that a little mint extract (much like almond extract) goes a long way. To really punch up hot chocolate with mint, I’d stick with a milder marshmallow and add in a shot of peppermint schnapps or simply stir it with a peppermint stick.
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