Visions of Sugarplums (well maybe just sugar)

I had this wonderful vision of doing drink mix themed goodie bags for holiday gifts.  Drink mix goodie bags complete with homemade marshmallows.  (Think hot chocolate and marshmallows.)  Around 4 p.m. tonight, I was questioning my sanity as my first batch of marshmallows tasted great but look a little like curdled cottage cheese.  Despite my previous failure, I decided to give it one more go with a different recipe and was delighted.  It actually worked and didn't require fourteen hundred steps or 2 hours of mixing.  And the mint version was amazing!  We may be finding little bits of marshmallow fluff all over the kitchen for days to come due to the extreme stickiness factor but I'm thinking it was worth it, if for nothing else, just being able to say I made homemade marshmallows.  (See attached photos for evidence of said stickiness.  If you look closely, you can literally see the sugar spinning itself into a spider web of goo.)