Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Great Marshmallow Experiment

Ok, so y'all know that I made the sugar free marshmallows on Saturday (and I'll be making another batch tonight...more on that in a few).  I also made a batch of regular marshmallows on Sunday and then yesterday I got an idea in my head... Flavored marshmallows.  Over the past 3 days I must have made around 200 marshmallows!!

I have a recipe for Cherry almond cupcakes that looks amazing.  My only problem?  I'm allergic to Maraschino cherries (not the cherries, but the sulfates that are used to preserve them) so even though technically I can make them, I wouldn't be able to eat even one so that kind of kills it for me.  I started to browse around for recipes for flavored marshmallows and learned that you can use fresh fruit like berries, bananas, and peaches.  You can Not use pineapple, kiwi, mango, or guava because of a particular enzyme that breaks down the gelatin so the mallows won't fluff up at all.

I also don't like to use food coloring.  I try to avoid it as much as possible because I think it adds a weird flavor to the marshmallows and I try to keep things as pure as I can. I make my own Vanilla extract and I'm going to make my own almond extract soon too since that stuff is seriously expensive.

I had a thought in my head yesterday and wasn't going to let it go until I got home and did it and I was So happy that I went through with it because even my kid said they were the best marshmallows that he'd ever had!

I bought a packet of dried cherries and put about 1/2 cup into my food processor and chopped them really fine.  I put the chopped up cherries back into the measuring cup and added 1 tsp of almond extract and just let it sit and steep while I made a batch of regular mallows.  I added the cherries in the last minute or so of whipping up the mallows and they came out a very very pale pink with little bits of cherries in them.

Absolute Perfection!!  I'm going to make a batch of cherry almond sugar free ones tonight and I'll also let y'all know how those turn out.



I'm thinking the next batch will be orange vanilla.. or strawberry vanilla... or maybe.... banana coconut?  I'm not sure... there are so many options :)

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