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I celebrated the first night of Hanukkah with my bestest buddies, both Jewish and gentile. Now most of you might remember that I am kitchen-challenged. So I was shocked when my friend Kimmy told me that she would be putting me in charge of making the chocolate dreidel treats a la freaking Martha Stewart. (We made ours dairy-free-ish to accommodate guests’ dietary restrictions.)
Homies, you’ll be so proud: with a LOT of coaching and hand-holding, I made the chocolate marshmallow dreidels and, therefore, so can you!
What you’ll need:
- The big marshmallows
- Chocolate chips
- Hershey’s Kisses (I chose the cookies and cream kisses, so that we could also display the unused Kisses as Hanukkah decorations, since they were a festive blue and silver)
- Coconut milk (for the dairy-free version, you could also use regular milk, of course)
- White Sparkle Gel icing
- Toothpicks or pretzel sticks (Martha says pretzel sticks, but we found toothpicks to be WAY easier to use)
- Wax paper
Here’s what you do:
We melted the chocolate in the microwave. I was told to melt the chocolate chips in a measuring cup at 15 second intervals, mixing the chocolate with coconut milk after the 15 seconds were up. I did this until the chocolate/milk combo made the chocolate not too hard to dip things in and not too thin to be drippy.
Unwrap your Kisses, and stab your toothpicks through the middle of the marshmallow and force a Kiss onto the end that pokes out.
Then comes the fun part — dip your naked dreidel into your melted chocolate.
Now, if I were to do it again I’d add the step of putting down wax paper! So guys, don’t be like me, put down a layer of wax paper before you gently place your drippy dreidel onto a plate.
Once you’re done dipping, toss your dreidels into the fridge and leave ’em there until the chocolate hardens.
Here’s where I had to bring in a ringer — as much as I’m kitchen-challenged, I’m even more artistically challenged. Luckily, my buddy John is both an artist and married into the Jewish culture, so he took over piping the symbols on a dreidel: Nun, Gimmel, Sin, and Heh.
Then boom! Yummy dreidel treats that went over a hit at the Hanukkah party.
Too cute! Happy Hanukkah! P.S. Are you sure they were dairy-free? The third ingredient in cookies and creme kisses is nonfat milk powder…
Oh oops, well… they’re dairy free-ish. 😉
You can get vegan chocolate chips at Whole Food. Also, Hershey’s Kisses aren’t dairy free. I’ve yet to find an a dairy free alternative to them sadly…
Have you checked any kosher stores? Also where i would go to find hoof free marshmallows if you want those.
You could also make your own, they’re really easy and all you need is to buy kosher gelatin to make them hoof-free.
Here’s a recipe! http://www.yumsugar.com/Easy-Homemade-Marshmallow-Recipe-7135379
Kosher gelatin is usually fish based. If you want to go vegetarian you need to be careful about that. But, as noted below, there are kosher/gluten free/vegan marshmellows on the market, they are just pricy (and small).
You can use agar agar to make your own vegan marshmallows. Plus agar agar is really fun to talk about. Agar agar.
Do they make dark chocolate kisses? Because if they do, they probably won’t contain dairy (though I would check the ingredient list to confirm).
Mazel tov!!!! …. (and btw, since my color scheme for this years’ Christmas decor is silver and blue (to coordinate w/new lake house:) you can make them for us this Christmas:)
Also, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but marshmallows are usually not kosher, unless you’ve specifically sought out kosher ones: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/273162
So, if you keep kosher, make sure you adjust this recipe accordingly! 🙂
A friend of mine did a similar thing with a kraft carmel instead of an marshmellow. The carmels are Circle K kosher.
BRILLIANT!
OMG I love this! And I love you! And yes, if you can do it, so can I….maybe.
At any rate, we posted this to the Bad Home Cooking group page on FB. Check us out!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/285040798841/
Re: dairy free and kosher; you could substitute little baked meringues for the marshmallows!
After a little searching, I was also able to find a vegan meringue cookie recipe.
http://www.veganbaking.net/cookies/710-pistachio-meringue-cookies
Happy Holiday baking, everyone!
I love you guys!
I eat dairy and non-kosher and I’m not Jewish… but reading the comments seeing everyone with good ideas helping each other out just totally made my day. 🙂
It is a cute presentation and the food is perfect for the occasion. This is really helpful because I love to eat sweets. I have been reading all your suggestions and I can’t wait to check them out soon.
I attempted this yesterday. I failed pretty miserably. My chocolate was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too thin. I made cold chocolate-washed marshmallows. They are sad. Even my husband dislikes them. 🙁