My Life: Marshmallows and Cat Teepees

Gosh, what a terrible name that would be for an autobiography.

Hopefully everyone had a nice Christmas!

I spent my day with the family over loads of food, movie-watching, and finally busting out the cat teepees! I had been working on them and had them done weeks before Christmas Day and it was torture trying to keep it a secret because as soon as you have a craft like a cat house completed, it takes everything you have not to find a cat and stuff it inside and hope that the cat loves it.

Marco loved it!

The construction of this thing is actually rather simple - I cut out five triangle panels and embellished them, sewed them together and added dowels for support, and finally made a cushion for the bottom of the teepee and hemmed it in so that it would be relatively easy to remove if needed.

Look at that cuteness. 

Blotches, my sister's cat, seems to fancy her new digs as well. Success!

Now onto the matter of marshmallows, I decided this year to make holiday goodie bags for work with hot cocoa and marshmallows. I made a batch of plain and then ran out of white sugar so I made a batch with brown sugar, which led to use of bourbon, which led to awesomeness.

They were actually pretty simple to make - the secret is in the temperature. Make sure to heat the sugar and syrup mixture to 240 degrees!

I used Ina Garten's recipe for the marshmallows HERE and altered it to make the brown sugar and bourbon marshmallows:

You Will Need:

3 packages of unflavored gelatin

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp bourbon

powdered sugar, for dusting

Combine the gelatin and 1/2 cup of cold water in the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Let sit while you prepare the syrup.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine brown sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 1/2 cup of water and cook until sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to high and cook until the syrup reaches 240 degrees. Remove from heat.

With the mixer on slow speed, pour the syrup into the dissolved gelatin. Mix on high speed until mixture is thick, about 15 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and bourbon and mix until combined.

With a sieve, generously dust an 8x12 inch baking dish with powdered sugar. Pour the marshmallow mixture into the pan, smooth the top, and dust with more powdered sugar. Allow to stand overnight to dry out. 

Once dry, turn the marshmallows onto a board and cut them into squares (I used a pizza cutter) and dust  cut ends with more powdered sugar to keep them from sticking.

The end result is a pretty soft and fluffy marshmallow!

You can cut them into different shapes and they're also big enough to dip into chocolate and coconut shavings or crushed peppermint if you want to jazz them up a bit.

We had ours on Christmas day with some of the leftover hot cocoa mix I had. 

HERE's the recipe I used for the hot cocoa! Another super easy and tasty recipe that will make enough to last all winter!

Hope everyone had a nice holiday!