Homemade Marshmallows

I have decided, after spotting this recipe on the Smitten Kitchen blog and giving it about five seconds of deliberation, that I shall make homemade marshmallows for our upcoming family vacation to Santa Barbara. Yes, I realize this is probably at the very bottom of the list of items I should be pondering with regards to our trip (Spf 30 sunscreen? check. Infant Tylenol? check. Diapers? check. Homemade marshmallows? check.) But given my whimsical (K would probably call it "erratic") nature, I have decided the children should not be deprived of the myriad joys resulting from roasting homemade marshmallows on a stick.

If you have to ask "why?!", I can only assume you've never actually tasted a homemade marshmallow before. In which case, words really cannot describe....but I shall give it my most valiant attempt.

Let's see. I suppose the best place to start is by confessing that until the day I actually tried a homemade marshmallow, I was most certainly in the "I hate marshmallows" camp. Sure, I was happy enough to munch on the charred and goopy ones hanging at the end of a campfire stick. But I could never understand my mother's deep, abiding love for Nabisco's Pinwheel Cookies (basically a large marshmallow resting atop a graham cracker covered in milk chocolate) or the huge cult-following of those god-awful Marshmallow Peeps (apologies to any Peeps fans out there). That said, I do clearly remember eating half a jar of Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Cream as a young kid. But that was out of sheer desperation. Anyway, you get the point.

Then one day, a few years ago, I stumbled across a ridiculously overpriced, beautiful package of "handcrafted artisan marshmallows" at Whole Foods. Having never heard of such a thing and always a sucker for great marketing, I bought a bag. I had no idea what to expect. I mean, these things looked nothing like the marshmallows I grew up on. First of all, they were big. And square-ish (no perfectly shaped, uniform blobs here!). And appeared to be lightly covered in what looked like powdered sugar.

Well. Not only did they look nothing like packaged marshmallows. They tasted nothing like them either. Honestly, Kraft and the other peddlars of mass-produced marshmallows should be ashamed of themselves. IMHO, we consumers are owed a big apology for being duped all these years. Because compared to the real thing, bagged marshmallows taste like shit.

Real marshmallows are truly sublime. The "original" flavored ones typically taste and smell of vanilla bean, are less dense than store-bought, and melt obligingly in your mouth. They add a creamy, frothy je ne sais quoi to hot chocolate. They are also excellent for campfires (but be warned, they tend to cook faster than their grocery store counterparts). They are, in a word, delicious....

....and relatively easy to make! Having said that, if you need marshmallows as an added ingredient for another treat (fudge or brownies or cookies or Rice Crispy Treats) then I might recommend either buying the hand-crafted version at an upscale food store or biting the bullet and grabbing a package at your local supermarket. Because let's be honest, unless you're Martha Stewart, you're not going to have the time to lovingly handcraft marshmallows solely for the purpose of using them as an ingredient for another recipe.

BTW, while researching this post, I stumbled across this brief history of marshmallows (the treat) on my beloved (if sometimes erroneous) Wikipedia. Who knew?