A Krispy of Mallow-less (Hoof-less) Marshmallows.

A long time ago, we came up with the fairly daft idea of making our own marshmallows.

Okay – it wasn’t really such a daft idea, as far as our rather ridiculous cooking experiments go — store-bought marshmallows are, unless otherwise stated, made with gelatin, which is generally made from the hooves and bones of various animals, and so most vegetarians are not at all keen on the idea of eating them, if they think about it at all (and most of us DON’T, when we’re kids or we’re offered them on camping trips, and then later we wince a bit). What was daft was that after we took a look at various awesome recipes from the interwebs (Smitten Kitchen’s recipe really is good, and if you’re going to eat gelatin marshmallows, it might be good make your own – unless you’ve identified what BHT and TBHQ are…), we decided to actually use mallow — the plant — and try to sort of reverse engineer what people did in the olden days before cornstarch.

Let us draw a veil over some of our…er… rather sticky, stringy, weirdly stretchy and singed results.

While it probably works just fine for other people, we did something really, REALLY wrong, scorched a lot of sugar, and suffice it to say, after we de-sticky-fied the kitchen, we haven’t gotten up our nerve to try again. We could have of course, but we reasoned, Hey, we don’t really like marshmallows all that much anyway.

And — we don’t. The marshmallows of our childhood were always too sweet. They were sort of …rubbery. The powdered sugar on them always got on everything – cheeks, lips, fingers, chins. In the realm of Really Pointless Foods, marshmallows are right up on top of the list…where they would have safely stayed, if it weren’t for our friend Jac.

Jac is a vegetarian who, lacking an American upbringing, has never endured Girl Scouts, Brownies, Pathfinders, Girl Guides, or S’mores. For some appalling reason, she truly, dearly, desperately wanted to try them, and asked us to get her some vegan marshmallows from the U.S. a couple of years ago. We tried. We went home three times over thirty-six months, and could never remember to get over to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or when we did, we found them cleaned out of vegan marshmallows or only carrying organic marshmallows – made, apparently, with organic horse’s hooves – and we were stumped, and T. got aggravated. She got serious about searching, only to discover that Jac had finally sourced her own marshmallows. Another friend of hers had gone to the East Coast and brought some back for her just this past June, along with the requisite graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate (which, she informs us, “tastes like sick.” We snicker at this and say, Just wait ’til you taste S’mores, Jac…).

So, Jac had her S’mores makings, and we had two packages of locally sourced vegan marshmallows we weren’t sure we wanted. D. was all for carting them off to Jac’s house anyway, and we will probably do that with our other package, but T. decided we should try something we haven’t enjoyed in awhile – Rice Krispy Treats.

Whole Foods used to carry a rice whip… thing… that was essentially a tub of marshmallow fluff, only it was made from brown rice syrup. It worked perfectly well with Rice Krispy or any puffed grain cereal to make the “treats” and we used it to make the Littles popcorn balls sometimes, too. However, we’d never tried vegan marshmallows – for a couple of reasons. First, they were hard to find. Second, there were questions of what a vegan marshmallow actually was. And, would they melt? Could we roast them? We tried these things with our Sweet Vegan marshmallows, and found to our surprise that the answer was yes! While they didn’t melt exactly like a gelatin marshmallows – they turned into a big soft pillowy ball of foam instead of liquid lava — they softened enough to work with in just a few seconds in the microwave. Roasting produced an all-over tanning — over a campfire would have been better, because then we could have seen how long they took to burn, which is really how they taste best. (Ahem. However, in a bid not to thoroughly mess up the kitchen, we refrained.)

In answer to the question of “what are they,” our bag of small vanilla marshmallows are made with Sugar, water, glucose syrup, carrageenan, corn starch, soy protein, Madagascar vanilla and a powdered sugar topping. We were a little revolted to discover we could have ordered them in strawberry, chocolate, or coconut flavors — which just seems weird. Who ever heard of flavored marshmallows? There’s a Lucky Charms or Count Chocula application in there somehow. We were also disappointed to discover that our vegan marshmallows contain no mallow. Of course, the jet-puffed store-bought ones don’t, either, but… we somehow expected mallow to be a base ingredient. Carregeenan – which is seaweed! – is a great substitute for the sticky, stringy mallow, however, and really served to make these a lot like the real gelatin-based confection.

We took our plain vanilla-esque mini-marshmallows out of the microwave, poured in our rice cereal, squooshed them into a brick on a convenient cutting board, and let them cool. Et voilà – Rice Krispy Treats! We were surprised how well it worked. Though we basically followed the “recipe” on the cereal box, we would actually have preferred to use more rice cereal, and will do so if we make these again. The Sweet Vegan marshmallows really have a lot of stretching power – they’re moist and dense and can take more cereal than we expected. Of course, everyone has their own Krispy Treat preferences, so you’ll have to experiment on your own.

Vegans and vegetarians in the U.S. have lots of choices for marshmallow purchasing – Sweet & Sara is carried in quite a few West Coast stores like WF and TJ’s, as are the Chicago-based jet-puffed Dandies, both of which can be ordered. (Or, if you make them yourself, do let us know how! We still want to someday make vegan ones which aren’t quite so sweet… when we have a kitchen that’s easier to hose down…)

We’re still not sold on marshmallows as an actually useful food in and of themselves. They’re still too sweet. They’re still too rubbery, and the powdered sugar still gets everywhere. However, Rice Krispy Treats somehow seem to hold the essence of autumn and school lunches, of party food for Hobo Nights and Halloween treats for those of us who didn’t Trick-or-Treat. They hold something of childhood, which make them a must-have-once-in-a-great-while treat.