The Voice of Mom

I was in the middle of making a cup of hot cocoa when a package from Plush Puffs arrived. What timing! Well, it would have been, if it wasn’t  peppermint hot cocoa and the package contained peppermint flavored marshmallows — as much as I love, uh, peppermint, that would have been too much.

No matter, I still couldn’t wait to try the all-natural peppermint flavored Plush Puffs. These gourmet marshmallows are made by a small artisan company in California.

The GOOD: These marshmallows are light, fluffy, billowy puffs of sticky, gooey goodness. The ingredient list is pretty simple, and you can pronounce everything on it. Yay for ingredients that I’ve heard of! They also have a clear, discernible, intense peppermint flavor.  Like the picture at the left, the packaging is very well done and ripe for gift giving.

The BAD: Unfortunately, these aren’t vegetarian — a point I try not to think about, if you know what I mean. But that’s common among items that use gelatin.

MONEY MATTERS: Available through the Plush Puffs website, the Peppi-Mint marshmallows are $5.99 for a bag of approximately 16-18.

THINK PINK: For October, Plush Puffs is making their Pink Peppi-Mint marshmallows in honor of breast cancer awareness. The company will also be donating to breast cancer research with 10 percent of the proceeds from this marshmallow flavor.

The MOM VERDICT

Sarah says: Several years ago, I spent a holiday season working at Williams-Sonoma. Until then, the only marshmallows I’d known were round, mass produced and filled with more lab-created ingredients than Pam Anderson’s cleavage. So you’ll understand when I say that I just wasn’t that excited by marshmallows before then. Since then, I’ve thought that the Williams-Sonoma marshmallows were the cat’s meow. Well, move over boys, these Plush Puffs kick you out of the playyard. This mom? Well, let’s just say that I ate these babies au natural… and NO! I don’t know where the rest of them went. Buy them.

Cate says: Truth be told, I’m just not a big marshmallow fan.  While my six-year-old would happily eat them by the handful if I let him, I only keep them on hand for baking, or my favorite fruity salad.  So when these arrived, I was a little skeptical and it took me a few days to get to them.  My son on the other hand?  Urged me to open the package up as soon as he saw them, and stuck his hand out right away, begging for one.  And another.  And another… wait, what about me?  Like Sarah, I loved that they contain only a few ingredients and pronounceable ones at that.  They were light, airy little puffs with just the right amount of peppermint in each bite.  These would be perfect as a holiday gift alongside a big thick colorful mug and homemade cocoa.  Yum.