For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been completely preoccupied with marshmallows. And graham crackers. And chocolate of course, because s’mores.
It’s because it’s summer.
And, because of my obsession with homemaking, literally everything we eat around here is not limited to just salads, but also to candy, and treats.
And that’s how I came to be the type of person who spends entire week working on a marshmallow recipe. Let me tell you that the results are worth not just one week but as many weeks as it could have taken to nail it.
They’re lighter and fluffier than any marshmallows I’ve ever eaten. So vanilla-y. And they char like a dream, becoming puffy, golden, gooey perfection.
Last week, I also had the added excuse of sharing the product of all of this “research” with a little street-side marshmallow stand outside of Fjallraven here in Boulder. Complete with masks and gloves (and thus a couple of glove burns when our skewers got too close to the flame of the fire pit (!!) it was a way of celebrating all the ways that we can still get outside in these times when we’re all figuring out how to live life.
…you may be asking. Well yes. You can! Making marshmallows is literally making candy. In whatever shape my life is taking, I want to be sure I’m making more time to make candy magic with real ingredients. What’s that even mean? Basically, that means cooking sugar to different temperatures, to coax it into it’s state of sweet bliss. There’s a good bit to know about how to do this, and I’ve written a little piece about learning how to cook sugar.
Sugar on it’s own, in specific soul-serving situations like charring a marshmallow over a campfire and then squishing it between a good-for-you-grahams and chocolate is not only not-bad for you, but GREAT FOR YOU. And as for the sugar, it, on it’s own, in the right context is not “bad for you.” Rather, the candy you buy on most shelves is chock-o-block full of ingredients that aren’t food, that our bodies can’t process. As a society, we demonize treats and suggest that they’re “bad for us,” but the only thing really bad for us is eating things that aren’t food.
That said, we can find “better” versions of sugar. When you head to the baking aisle, look straight past the bleached sugar – you’ll know the product because it won’t have the words specifically “unbleached” across the top. This sugar you’re looking for is typically “cane sugar,” and will be a bit more creamy in color than the shockingly-bright white color of bleached sugar. The bleaching process effectively eliminates any of the good minerals derived from the cane plant, which DOES have nutritional benefit. Bleached white sugar, does not.
This recipe for marshmallows also contains light corn syrup, which will throw up a flag for many of you as well. Corn syrup is not high fructose corn syrup, which is a man-made invention. Corn syrup is entirely natural.
Both products are made from corn starch, but regular corn syrup is 100 percent glucose, while high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has had some of its glucose converted to fructose enzymatically. What does this mean? If you were to take 1 tablespoon of both high-fructose corn syrup and corn syrup, you would find that the high-fructose corn syrup would have twice the sweetening power, and twice the sugar, of the corn syrup. This was a brilliant scientific innovation that allow commercial food production to pack more addicting sweet flavor into their foods for less cost. (Gee, thanks ya jerks!) Scientists are examining the potentially negative effects of consuming large amounts of fructose in the form of HFCS, but regular corn syrup is not part of that consideration, as it does not contain fructose.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the corn syrup you buy in the store is HFCS-free, unfortunately. Manufacturers sometimes add HFCS to regular corn syrup, but it will be listed as an ingredient if that is the case. So read labels carefully. I stick with Karo brand, which does not add HFCS to their products.
My hope is that – whatever shape your day to day is taking – that you have a little time to make your own marshmallows too, and hopefully your own s’mores and so, I’m sharing my newly finagled recipe here.
Before I dive into this candy-magic formula, a couple of notes on marshmallows and, s’mores:
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