Marshmallows Are Super Easy To Make

Gourmet marshmallows are sooo easy to make and sooo damn addictive.

EASY & DELISH | Made-from-scratch marshmallows are having a moment. That’s the headline that jumped out at me last month in T, the New York Times style magazine. This may be what T’s editors think, but actually, among foodies, fresh-made marshmallows have been enjoying a moment since 2008, which is around the time Vancouver’s Butter Baked Goods began making and marketing its delectable gourmet marshmallows ($7.99 for 10) to an appreciative audience—and famous food bloggers like Deb Perelman of smittenkitchen.com could be found whipping up marshmallows and visually documenting the process on their websites.

A Mellower Mallow

Homemade marshmallows taste nothing like the factory-made Jet-Puffed you find at Safeway. And while the exceptional flavour of boutique marshmallow brands like Butter is something you should experience, I find the marshmallows you make yourself taste even better than these (and cost a lot less, too).

You can make marshmallows easily in fewer than 30 minutes if you have a mixer. Smitten Kitchen’s Perelman used a 1998 recipe from Gourmet magazine to make hers (CLICK HERE to get it at epicurious.com), and I find it works perfectly. On her blog, Perelman writes about how a run-in with her stand mixer caused problems the first time she made these pillowy treats; reading about her misadventure has helped me avoid similar mistakes (CLICK HERE for her blog post).

I’ve made chocolate marshmallows and fruit-flavoured marshmallows, but my favourite by far are toasted coconut marshmallows flavoured with Bailey’s Irish Cream. I used the Gourmet recipe for my marshmallow base (substituting Bailey’s for vanilla) and followed The Cooking Photographer Laura Flowers’ recipe when it came to toasting and coating my marshmallows with coconut (CLICK HERE for her recipe) . —Olivia Pittman

Photo, top: Laura Flowers, thecookingphotographer.com