Miss Frugal and her friends love Starbucks and whenever they go shopping, they usually pop in for a round of iced caramel Macchiatos and Marshmallow Twizzles.
Now I don’t usually object to what she spends her pocketmoney on but when she’s paying £1.19 for three marshmallows on a stick covered in chocolate then I have to say something!
Rather than tell her not to spend her money on them anymore, I decided to make my own and show her just how much of a profit Starbucks were making on each one they sold (yes, I know I’m not taking into account any business overheads but I’m proving a point here ;-)).
So I bought a 200g packet of marshmallows for £1 (luxury marshmallows if the packet is to be believed), a bar of cooking chocolate for 65p, and a bag of white chocolate chips for 49p. Even taking into account the sprinkles and toppings I used from our cupboard that’s still around £2.50 in total for the ingredients that I used to make 8 or my own version of Marshmallow Twizzles – 31p each.
I basically just cut some wooden skewers in half and threaded three marshmallows on to each one. Next I melted the chocolate (using the microwave in short blasts) and spooned the melted chocolate over each of the marshmallow kebabs. I cut some small potatoes in half and stuck the chocolate covered marshmallows into them to let the chocolate set a little bit before I added my sprinkles. I left them to set in the fridge before taking them out and wowing Miss Frugal with our amazing bargain Marshmallow Twizzles.
I know this isn’t a complicated recipe and I could really have just shared it as a part of one of my five frugal things weekly posts but I wanted to give it a post of it’s own as it’s a great way to show your children how they can often recreate their own versions of things without the huge mark up that they’ll pay in the shops.
We made something that genuinely tastes the same (to us at least) as the Starbucks Marshmallow Twizzles taste but our version cost around 75% less than the ones you can buy from Starbucks. Not only that but we had fun making them together and we can choose our own sprinkles to use – the popping candy ones definitely went down well with the kids!
I think it was a lesson well learned by the kids as they both admit that they can’t taste the difference and that they would sooner have ours for 31p than the Starbucks ones for £1.19. Mr Frugal especially was quite shocked at the price difference whereas I think the surprise for Miss Frugal was that ours actually tasted like the ones she’s used to buying. I’m sure she’ll buy the odd one every now and again but at least she’ll think twice in future!!
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