Marshmallow Top Hats are just the cutest thing.

Marshmallow top hats are what it's called when you get a lovely fat marshmallow, dip it in chocolate then sprinkle it with edible coloured shapes.  They're a kids thing, as they're so easy to make that kids can make them by themselves, or with a bit of adult supervision.  Plus kids love to eat them!

Mini-2 is nearing the end of her pre-school nursery (kindergarten) year and they wanted to hold a Cake and Candy stall to help raise money to buy in some live chicks so the kids could watch them turn into bigger chickens and then hens.  But they took too long to get organised and there were a couple of animal regulations that wouldn't be fulfilled, so the idea was to raise the money to get an animal handler to visit both morning and afternoon nursery sessions, with a selection of larger insects and animals,  instead.  We were busy at Becca Towers, what with the anniversary cake, the birthday cakes, and customer orders that we didn't have much time spare to bake.  Then I rememberd top hats from other children's parties and knew we'd have time for them...

We had some green Candy Melts that we'd been waiting to use for some time, and I thought this would be a fun way to do so.  We followed the pack instructions and dropped a little into each petit four case. 

Then we had to quickly dip the marshmallow into position before the melted chocolate started to harden. We popped them in the fridge to firm up and slowly worked our way through 6 dozen marshmallows, eek!  We ran out of green coloured chocolate part-way through, so changed to white chocolate...

We chose a selection of all our lovely edible sprinkle shapes and colours and did a little bowlful at a time.  We chose to put chocolate on the top then dip them upside down into the bowl, rather than drizzle sprinkles from the bowl onto the marshmallow (much more dexterity needed, thus more potential for mess, for the latter method).  So some of them are a little smeared looking (those were Mini-2's ones, honest!), but they would all taste great.

And here's a selection of the finished products - so much fun, to look at, to make and to eat!  Enjoy.