Recipe: Fresh Raspberry Marshmallows Recipe »
Home made marshmallows are surprisingly easy, especially once you have a sugar thermometer and they are so much better than any marshmallow that you could buy in the supermarket. The home made version is soft and light as a feather and melts on the tongue and is only made up of a few ingredients. They've enjoyed a resurgence with Gena Karp from Sweetness the Patisserie making them in myriad flavours and she too uses only real fruit syrups and purees.
I decided to make these using the berries that we seem to have an abundance of lately although you could certainly use any fruit that takes your fancy for the flavouring. I just like the tartness of raspberries against the sweetness of the sugar. After slicing these up I popped some of the end pieces into my mouth (a cook's treat) and tasted the lovely tang of the real raspberries against the pillowy softness of the marshmallows. I melted like these melted on my tongue.
"Eating your crusts makes your hair curly" an eight year old friend whispered to us assuredly while gingerly pulling off the crust from her sandwich. She had curlier than curly hair and was making every effort to straighten her hair. We were in primary school and passing on important tidbits of information. My other friend Joanne and I chomped resolutely on our crusts. We wanted curly hair - ringlets, if possible.
"But did you know that eating marshmallows makes your (and here she paused dramatically for effect and giggled)... boobies grow?" another friend whispered to us. We were huddled around the playground, our legs burning as we were sitting cross legged on the scalding hot concrete. We leaned in nevertheless when she showed us a bag of raspberry and vanilla marshmallows. We looked at each other. One girl reached forward and then we gasped at her. She wanted boobies? :o She quickly snapped back her arm as if the bag contained a cobra and leaned back down.
"What will happen to us if we do eat some?" I asked picturing growing some spongey marshmallow boobies. And curiosity got the better of us and that afternoon we all ate one of the raspberry and vanilla marshmallows, went home and to bed and woke up looking exactly as we did the day before. We breathed a sigh of relief but every time I think of marshmallows I think back to that day (and I wonder if my friends do too).
Of course eating marshmallows doesn't make anything grow and perhaps my friend came to this theory based on watching her mother making marshmallows and seeing them swell as they were whipped up.
So tell me Dear Reader, which wives tales did you hear when you were young? And did you believe them?
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