We're spending our last 4 shipping days of the Valentine's season giving away Wondermade Marshmallows and Hot Chocolates!
• Wednesday at noon we'll giveaway our 4-box Valentine's Set, featuring Rosé Wine, Chocolate-Drizzled Strawberry, Cherry Chocolate Chip and Rose Raspberry marshmallows. • Thursday at noon we'll pick a winner for our Raspberry Hot Chocolate and Vanilla Marshmallow combo.
• Friday we'll award our Lux Set, featuring Gold Champagne, Mint Chocolate Chip and Chocolate-Drizzled Strawberry Marshmallows.
• Saturday we'll give away a mystery prize (cue mysterious music) at noon.
Here's how it works:
The contest is open to residents of the US. There are three ways to enter each day. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook to enter - everyone following us at the drawing time with a visible profile is entered. Mentioning a friend in the comments gets you an additional entry. Reposting / sharing also gets you an extra entry.
We'll cut off entries at 11 and pick a winner at noon. We'll contact winners via social media and post the name of the winner on this page. Wondermade staff and family aren't edible to win - sorry mom!
Last month a corporate client asked us to ship 10,000 deliveries of marshmallows to their customers. That’s 10,000 boxes, each filled with a box of Fireball Marshmallows along with an encouraging note from their company.
Now 10,000 boxes is a lot of orders. It’s enough to fill a semi! Except we were shipping with USPS and they didn’t send us any tractor trailers. Instead they sent their mail trucks which we filled over, and over, and over. In fact, it took us 20 USPS trucks to load all the boxes.
That meant for the week our shipping area was overflowing with boxes. Our stock shelves were filled with row after row of Fireball mallows. For weeks our whole shop smelled faintly of cinnamon… which was awesome! But despite Hurricane Matthew’s best efforts we got all of the orders boxed and taped and shipped and into the hands of the client’s customers.
As soon as the deliveries started arriving we started hearing from some of the recipients. We’ve seen enthusiastic social media posts and fielded some awesome emails and even phone calls. See these shipments were surprises - unexpected gifts designed to introduce a moment of joy into people's days.
And from what we’ve heard and seen it’s worked! So if you have some customers you want to delight or appreciate or just say thanks to, let us know. We’d love to help you add a little wonder to their day!
Yesterday I started the ice cream diet. I know that sounds funny but give me a minute and I think you’ll see how this makes all the sense in the world.
See most diets are about what you didn’t eat. What if instead diets could be about having fun with what you did eat?
That’s what this ice cream diet is. A chance to spend a week having incredible fun touring through 21 flavors of our new Wondermade Ice Cream. So that’s what I’m doing! For the next week, 3 meals a day are ice cream, ice cream, ice cream!
I know it might sound crazy but sometimes in life we need a little more crazy. Plus it’s a great chance to show off not just Wondermade Ice Cream, but also to show off how much more you can do with ice cream than people might think.
So what makes Wondermade Ice Cream worth it? Not only does it taste amazing - it’s also different than probably any other ice cream you’ve ever had. See usually when you make ice cream you mix the cream and milk and sugar then you slowly churn the ice cream while you freeze it. That’s why when it melts it turns into ice cream soup - all the air that gets added it just added by freezing.
But our ice cream start with house made whipped cream. So right at the start we bind the air and the volume by turning heavy whipping cream into whipped cream. Then we add the milk and sugar and other ingredients.
That means we’ve got two sorts of magic at work here:
1. We get to make the most incredible flavored whipped creams around. Our lavender ice cream starts with lavender whipped cream. Our triple chocolate ice cream starts with dark chocolate whipped cream. So we’re pretty spoiled in the getting-to-have-awesome-whipped-cream world.
2. When our ice cream melts it doesn’t just turn into ice cream soup. It turns back into whipped cream! It’s almost like two desserts in one. That’s especially fun if you’re enjoying the ice cream in a cone because especially in a place like Orlando you aren’t in quite the race against time.
Back to the diet!
I started yesterday morning with Maple Bacon Ice Cream served with extra bacon on a waffle bed. Put simply, the Maple Bacon Ice Cream is amazing. It’s got the perfect mix of salty and sweet in large part because we use grade A maple syrup for the base because candying the bacon in-house for the mixin.
It was just as good as you'd think it would be!
For lunch I had Avocado Ice Cream with pineapple peach salsa on a bed of corn chips. Avocado Ice Cream is a wonderful and definitely surprising. It’s our most popular sample flavors at the shop and for good reason. We take perfectly ripened avocados and puree them for this ice cream. It’s pretty amazing because when you turn avocado into ice cream all the mildly bitter notes of avocado that good guac brings out get hidden. Instead the warmer fruity notes get drawn out by the ice cream making the most refreshing ice cream imaginable.
I wrapped up the first day with Cornbread Ice Cream for dinner. We roasted some corn and summer squash as a garnish and it was amazing. To see how it turns out and how the next 6 days go, be sure to follow along at Kickstarter or on Instagram or on Facebook.
1. Love requires giving. And giving always means someone else ends up with more, while you end up with less. If that's not happening than you're not really loving anyone.
2. Someone loved you first. In fact, many people have loved you before you ever loved them.
3. "There's no greater love than laying down your life for a friend.” This is 100% true, but practically speaking people rarely need someone to die for them. Don't miss the regular love people do need every day in the form of someone who will live for them.
4. Love always has a cost.
5. If there's not someone you'd consider dying for then there's probably no one you’ll consider living for either.
6. Looking at where you spend your time, treasure and talents is the quickest way to tell who you love. And who loves you.
7. You teach the people around you how to love you by how you love them.
8. The second law of thermodynamics states that everything is moving toward chaos. The universe is heading toward disorder and destruction. Love runs against the universe and out of nothing, constructs. Where physics drives us toward nothingness, love drives us towards somethingness.
9. Love is always a choice.
10. The only way to love big is to start by loving small. The only way to love often is to love once. There's no other path to a life of love than a collection of small actions.
1. Love requires giving. And giving always means someone else ends up with more, while you end up with less. If that's not happening than you're not really loving anyone.
2. Someone loved you first. In fact, many people have loved you before you ever loved them.
3. "There's no greater love than laying down your life for a friend.” This is 100% true, but practically speaking people rarely need someone to die for them. Don't miss the regular love people do need every day in the form of someone who will live for them.
4. Love always has a cost.
5. If there's not someone you'd consider dying for then there's probably no one you’ll consider living for either.
6. Looking at where you spend your time, treasure and talents is the quickest way to tell who you love. And who loves you.
7. You teach the people around you how to love you by how you love them.
8. The second law of thermodynamics states that everything is moving toward chaos. The universe is heading toward disorder and destruction. Love runs against the universe and out of nothing, constructs. Where physics drives us toward nothingness, love drives us towards somethingness.
9. Love is always a choice.
10. The only way to love big is to start by loving small. The only way to love often is to love once. There's no other path to a life of love than a collection of small actions.
In July I got to talk about love and marshmallows at TEDxFargo, a remarkable one-day intensive celebration of Wonder. (And yes, ‘wonder’ really was the conference's theme!)
Talking about a passion to a crowd of people is both easy and nerve-wracking. What’s nerve-wracking? Lights, smoke machines and a room full of people combine to create lots of things that could go wrong. That’s probably why public speaking consistently ranks among people’s greatest fears - so many ways to fail! And as the opening speaker I had to operate purely on trust that everything was going to work.
But we should never have anything to fear when we’re invited to tell our own story, especially not to a group of people who want to hear it. And in the end that's what made it easy.
I told the story of how Jenn and I started Wondermade and what we’ve learned about love along the way. We’ve learned that love takes only two forms: Love is either give what you get or love is give everything you’ve got. Most importantly that when love is a ‘give-what-you-get’ practice, things never end well.
Here’s my TED talk in all it’s glory:
Getting to talk with 1800 people about love and how to love better was a profound honor. Spending the rest of the day in one-on-one conversations was even better. I got to hear incredible stories about love and hope and adventure and bravery.
Until a year ago I’d never been to Fargo - I didn’t know a thing about it aside from the Coen Brother’s film. But fast forward 16 months, hundreds of conversations, three trips and one TEDx later and I’m in love. It’s an incredible city full of remarkable people - if you have a chance spend a few days there. Book a room at the HoDo and experience what a small town renaissance looks like firsthand.
Oh, and if you like the talk would you tell a friend? Sharing is what stories are all about, after all.
Earlier this year we partnered with Triscuit as a part of their "Makers of More" campaign. They asked us to come up with a new flavor that would show off just how wonderful and versatile Triscuits are. This partnership was a no brainer for us - with 4 kids snacks are already a huge part of life. We’ve always been big fans of Triscuit so coming up with a Wondermade flavor seemed like an awesome challenge.
After months of consideration and research we landed on Blackberry Marshmallows. We’ve got this incredible recipe where you put a layer of Nutella on a Triscuit, then add a thinly sliced banana and a toasted Blackberry marshmallow. You can even add one more Triscuit on top for a pretty incredible savory s’more. Of course the Blackberry Marshmallows are great on their own, but the way all those different tastes complement creates a pretty compelling argument for eating marshmallows at breakfast.
Triscuit also recruited other companies for recipes in their “Maker of More” campaign: Savannah Bee Company, The Jam Stand, Olympia Provisions and McClure’s Pickles. Plus they partnered with Martha Stewart for her own line of Toasted Coconut Sea Salt Triscuits. So we’re excited not just about the new Blackberry mallows, but also to be a part of this great campaign.
Today marks 1000 days of wearing red pants. Red has always been my favorite color and I’d wanted a pair of red pants since I was a kid. When I finally saw a pair in a store the next day became my new favorite day of the week, decked out in those red pants.
Quickly I realized if I had a second pair I could have two favorite days of the week. After conferring with my wife (“Can I get away with wearing red pants twice a week?” “Of course!”) I moved to two pair of red pants and two favorite days of the week.
What kind of person, when confronted with the chance to make every day a favorite day, would turn that down? Soon thereafter my closet was filled with matching trousers and my calendar was filled with matching favorite days.
It’s the same rationale that led my wife and I so quickly to move from a date to dating to marriage. Whether it pants or people, when you know you’ve found a favorite don’t be afraid to go all in.
At times it’s been hard. When my kids threw a marker in with a load of red pants that was nearly the end of the experiment. As you may imagine, they’re not the easiest clothes to come by.
1000 days in and I’m not looking for my out. Much like in marriage there’s a joy that comes from the rhythm of sameness. And while the grass could be greener, the pants can only get redder.
Christmas was approaching and I was stuck without any great gift ideas. I wanted to give something awesome to Jenn, but nothing seemed right. I heard an interview on NPR about candy and started wondering how to make candy. A little time on the Internet and I'd learned we had everything we needed to cook our own marshmallows except for a candy thermometer and some know-how.
Lucky me, she loved the gift. So we cooked our first batch and were pretty amazed at just how good they were. That's not because we were candy-making prodigies - a quick glance at the ingredients on store-bought marshmallows helped us realize that we'd just grown up with low-quality candy.
So we kept cooking, trying new recipes and different flavors. You can't cook just one marshmallow, so we always had copious quantities to give to our friends.
I still remember the first time a friend asked to order some of our marshmallows. It was a huge "Aha!" moment for us. We loved these marshmallows. So did our friends. Why wouldn't everyone? So we spent a year perfecting our recipes. We spent that year perfecting our processes. And we spent that year perfecting our packaging so that every detail of Wondermade was built with as much love and care as we put into our marshmallows.
Wondermade started with an act of love. It's that same love today that keeps us committed to crafting incredible marshmallows that are as fun to share as they are to eat.
FAQs
How quickly will my order ship?
Information on shipping schedules, as well as typical ship times is available on our shipping page. New orders are currently expected to ship in 1-2 days via USPS. Domestic shipping costs $3.45 for 1 box, and then $1 for each additional box.
How many marshmallows come in a box?
We put 16 1"x1" marshmallows in every box. After we cut them to size,
we arrange them in a tidy grid, seal them in a plastic bag and finally
nestle your mallows into our signature 4.2"x4.2" boxes.
What's the shelf life of Wondermade marshmallows?
Shelf life ranges from 6-16 weeks with everything we're shipping.
What kind of sugar do you use? Is there corn syrup in your marshmallows?
We exclusively use cane sugar for all of our marshmallows. We think cane
sugar is the best tasting sweetener around. There are corn syrups made
to taste just like cane sugar. Many people cook with them, but they're
chemically different. Cane sugar is sucrose; corn syrups are a mix of glucose
and fructose in varying percentages. That means they bind to ingredients
differently, they cook differently and your body processes them differently.
We think their sort of 'different' isn't very good. We prefer being the
sort of "different" that's better. It is easier to make marshmallows with
corn syrups. But we're in the business of superior marshmallows, not easier-for-us
marshmallows. So we're more than willing to take extra steps to deliver
extra good mallows.
Who designed your logo? Who printed your boxes?
We obsess over every ingredient and every step of the cooking process
to bring you the best marshmallows around. We wanted someone who cared
that much about design for our logo, and someone who cared that much about
printing for our boxes. We partnered with Heads of State out of Philadelphia
for the branding and design work we needed. Then we took their work to
Studio on Fire for their incredible work with their antique letterpresses.
They're both remarkable teams and we can't recommend either highly enough.
After months of consideration and research we landed on 
