Honey Vanilla Marshmallow Fluff

Not to be fickle to my past loves, but I have just fallen in love anew. With yet another marshmallow-related treat. That is so, so easy to make - unlike those millions of batches of guimauves I've made in the last few years. Really, in the original recipe, the procedure lists ONE step. Amazing.

If you're a fan of good ole Kraft Marshmallow Fluff, you've got to try this. You could even make it all organic, with agave! It does take raw eggs, so if you are wary of that risk I'm afraid I don't have another option for you yet (haven't tried powdered eggs whites at this time).

All you have to do is throw the ingredients into a bowl and whip them up with an electric mixer, and voilà! Light, fluffy, sweet goo with a hint of honey and a touch of vanilla. Wonderful swirled into ice cream or on top of it; great in peanut butter sandwiches; delightful swiped off the side of the mixer bowl. I'm thinking this will make a yummy gift as well, especially since my collection of glass jars to reuse is starting to fill up their drawer. And this makes a huge amount that I could (well, should) never finish by myself in the 3 weeks it stays good.

Making this reminded me of this episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate, in which Duff and the folks of Charm City Cakes get a crazy-looking ice cream sundae called the "CMP" at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore, MD. CMP = Chocolate, Marshmallow, & Peanuts. Peanuts steeped in sugar syrup dumped over three scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with organic ganache and marshmallow fluff, sealed into a glass with a disk of cooked hard crack sugar (seriously, blow torched around the edges of the glass!). As soon as I got just a little glimpse of that sundae, I coveted it with a passion. This is me, still thinking about that one minute clip of a TV show 6 months later. So making this fluff was the perfect opportunity to make my own version of CMP. I don't keep peanuts around, but I boiled some pecans in simple syrup, threw them on a scoop of my homemade coconut ice cream, topped it with some bittersweet ganache, and then a pile of this fluff. CMP = OMG. The bittersweet chocolate with the sweet fluff was perfect.

The fluff turned out very sweet for me, so the recipe below includes a tad less agave than I used. If agave is too strong of a flavor for you, you may replace some of it with light corn syrup, or swap it all out for one cup of corn syrup.

Honey Vanilla Marshmallow Fluff

based on this recipe, referral thanks to my friend at Movies and Munchies

2 large egg whites

3/4 C agave syrup

1/4 C honey

pinch salt

1 C confectioner's sugar

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Place the egg whites, agave, honey, and salt in a mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. Use an electric hand mixer or a whip attachment for your stand mixer to whip the ingredients on medium high speed for 5 minutes, until the ingredients have doubled in volume and look pale and thick. Slowly beat in the sugar, then mix in the vanilla.

Store fluff in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks. Lick the bowl so that none gets wasted.

Adaptable Icings: Buttercream and Mascarpone Frostings

I accidentally had a cupcake for lunch on Valentine's Day; it wasn't planned, it just was there in front of me at noon, and I thought "I can't just Not Eat that cupcake." So I ate it. Which reminded me that I made all of these cupcakes last weekend for a friend's birthday...

She had requested a variety of frostings - chocolate, cream cheese, and vanilla bean - so I decided go on a spurt of cupcake creativity. The kind of spurt where I make 6 different flavors, using a basic cake and frosting as a foundation. I honestly started out with about 10 flavors in mind, which I whittled down to 6, which finally became 5 in the absence of key ingredients and extra time.

This time I went with my favorite mascarpone chocolate cupcake recipe, minus the mixed-in chocolate chips. For one of the flavors I mixed in some spice, and for one I added some white chocolate chips, but the rest I left plain chocolate. And then came the icings:

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting
This is really just a basic buttercream with a vanilla bean scraped in.

Cream together:
1 C (2 sticks) salted butter
1 tsp vanilla
the seeds of one vanilla bean scraped into the bowl

Add:
1 lb (about 4 C) powdered sugar
2 T milk or cream or soy milk

To make this into a chocolate buttercream, add:

1 T unsweetened cocoa powder
4 oz melted dark chocolate (bittersweet chocolate chips work fine)

To make this into a cinnamon chocolate icing (think Mexican chocolate, with cinnamon mixed into the batter as well!) add:

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mascarpone White Chocolate Frosting
For the remaining cupcakes, I made a mascarpone icing, similar to cream cheese but a little less sour. Together with the chocolate cupcakes that had white chocolate chips mixed in, it had the effect of a chocolate cheesecake. I split off some of this frosting to also make a raspberry mascarpone icing, for which I filled the chocolate cupcakes with raspberry jam. To fill cupcakes, cut a cone out of the top of the cupcake, into the middle of the cake, and then lop off the tip of the cone, fill the space with jam, and replace the top of the cake.

Cream together:
1/4 C (1/2 stick) salted butter
1/4 C mascarpone cheese
1 tsp vanilla

Then add:
2 C powdered sugar
3 oz. melted white chocolate chips

To make this a raspberry mascarpone white chocolate icing (shall we just call this "raspberry" for short?), add:

several tablespoons of good raspberry jam (to taste)


When making these frostings, cream the butter/mascarpone and vanilla well together first, until it's getting fluffy, and then after slowly encorporating the powdered sugar and other additions, beat it long enough to make it light and smooth. You want it to make voluptuous cupcakes, n'est-ce pas?

It's always my feeling that food should be decorated to look like it tastes, so I encourage you to find creative ways of doing so - while it might seem too obvious to put white chocolate chips on top of white chocolate frosting, I like the way the textures and shapes look together. And hey, you know what you're eating when you pick it up.

Be forewarned that the amounts of icing produced by these recipes are not proportionate to one batch of 24 cupcakes; the vanilla bean buttercream is more than enough to frost 24, but the mascarpone icing is about enough for 12.

Bon appétit!

Making Vanilla Extract

Back in August I read this blog post and decided to make my own vanilla extract.  It sounded so easy - just throw the stuff in a jar, stick it in a cupboard for a few months, and voilà, vanilla extract!

The vanilla beans I ordered online were a great deal, and I've been able to add fabulous flavor to marshmallows and various baked goods with them.  

The extract, on the other hand, is taking a little longer than expected to produce results.  While the instructions I followed at the top link above said that the initial concoction of alcohol, store-bought vanilla extract, and vanilla beans should produce a useable extract after 6-8 weeks, I found that it was rather weak.  Well, weak on vanilla - but still very strong on the alcohol!  I have used the extract in a few baked goods since October, but only when I knew it would not greatly affect the outcome.

This slow development of my extract may be due to the slow rate at which I am adding vanilla beans as I use up their seeds in other cooking projects, but I have a feeling that this would not account for the still very powerful alcohol content that was supposed to have faded by now.  I have used a combination of vodka and brandy in order to develop a more complex flavor, but perhaps they have just strengthened each other's resolve to dominate the jar...

I will continue to add beans to the jar and let it sit in my cupboard, but I would love any tips about how to assist this development.  As I read online, this would make a great gift, and a continuous supply of vanilla extract would be immensely practical, but I'm still pretty far from that goal...any helpful ideas?

Fall Cupcakes

Since I'm taking forever to write this post, I decided to just post the pictures without the full recipes, but you've got the idea from my previous cupcake posts: make a white cake mix and add flavors, decorate with buttercream or cream cheese frosting tinted with complementary flavors and colors!

Here we go:


These are the vanilla bean brandy and mint chip cupcakes. As you might guess, the former are flavored with the seeds of a vanilla bean and a small touch of brandy, and the latter were given a light touch of mint extract and sprinkled with dark chocolate chunks (and green food coloring reminiscent of the ice cream!).


On the left are the caramelized apple cupcakes, which are based on a Tarte Tatin idea; I caramelized an apple, puréed it, and mixed some in with the batter. Then I made some brown sugar caramel and coated the bottom of each cupcake liner with the caramel and poured the batter in on it. They stuck fantastically to the pan, so greasing it would have been good, but in the end I was able to peel the paper off each cupcake and turned them over into new liners, as pictured here. Since a Tarte Tatin is an upside-down cake, I thought it would be appropriate...and I added more caramel on top for good measure. On the right are pumpkin spice cupcakes, to which I added spices based on my family pumpkin pie recipe, plus some pumpkin purée. Both of these cupcakes were moister than the others because of the fruit purées, and the others were lighter.


Mint chocolate chip, topped with chocolate buttercream that had just a hint of mint extract (the stuff is strong, so be careful!) and dark chocolate chunks.


Pumpkin spice, swirled on top with cream cheese frosting that had a bit of the pumkin pie spice in it (see the flecks?), and an abstract pumpkin piped on with a few green sprinkles to insinuate a stem. The pumpkin decoration is a bit too abstract, since people still had to ask what the flavor was, but I still think it's cute.


I kept the vanilla bean decoration simple, adding more vanilla bean seeds to the buttercream, but again included brandy to keep a thematic kick to the cupcake.

And, finally, the caramelized apple took a squiggly dollop of cream cheese frosting on top, with more brown sugar caramel mixed in.

I've just learned that there is a book out there called The Cake Mix Doctor which basically does what I've been doing with these cupcakes - it tells you how to start with a cake mix and flavor it up in all sorts of ways. This reinforces for me the fact that cake mixes are fairly fool proof; you can do a lot to them and they'll still turn out great!

I've added fruit purées of varying densities, extracts, cocoa powder, coffee, caramel, fruit juice, spices, sprinkles, dried fruit, Oreos, coconut, nuts, honey, almond paste, and candy (i.e., all manner of liquids, fats, and sugars!) and every one has been a success. As my mom says, cake mixes are full of stabilizers that home cooks don't have access to for cakes from scratch, which means that cakes from scratch can be pretty difficult to get right (something I personally have proven with a number of dense, heavy cakes). It takes mastering a number of correct techniques in order to get a good scratch cake.

So, don't feel bad if you rely on cake mixes! Why not use a fool-proof method of achieving a moist and well-textured cake? Just get creative by doctoring the batter up a bit to satisfy your inner food artist. And make sure to use homemade frosting, since that part is super easy and makes an immeasurable difference in the final product.

Guimauve Flavoring: Orange, Vanilla, and Brown Sugar

I am learning that I should not ever announce that a particular food is my favorite, since it will invariably be unseated by the next fancy that captures me - hence the "FoodFancies of the Moment" sidebar of this blog!

While marshmallows have remained a consistent interest of mine this year, one of the reasons I find them so appealing is the fact that I can play with them. I can try out all manner of flavors with them, and can even shape and dip them as I please.

I have recently been enjoying orange, vanilla bean, and brown sugar flavored marshmallows, so I wanted to share these flavor possibilities with you. The orange is fresh and bright, the vanilla bean is sweetly vanilla with a hint of brandy, and the brown sugar is buttery with specks of fleur de sel.

Orange Guimauve Flavoring
Use 4 tsp. orange extract to flavor one half of the original recipe, colored by one drop of red food coloring and 2-3 drops of yellow food coloring. If you eat any of these marshmallows before coating them in sugar, they will taste bitter due to the amount of orange extract; the sugar coating will remove the bitter edge and make them pleasantly sweet.

To coat cut-up orange marshmallows, roll in granulated sugar mixed with the zest of one orange. The granulated sugar adds crunch and sparkle to the pieces, and the zest adds color, texture, and bright flavor.

Vanilla Bean Guimauve Flavoring
In a small bowl, combine 1 tsp. vanilla extract, 2 tsp. brandy, and the beans scraped from inside one vanilla pod. Let sit while you prepare the basic marshmallow recipe, and then add the flavoring to one half of the original recipe when called for.

To coat cut-up vanilla marshmallows, roll in powdered sugar (vanilla powdered sugar if you have it).

I have bought vanilla beans online from this website; it is my understanding that online purchase of vanilla beans is by far the cheapest way to obtain them.

Brown Sugar au Fleur de Sel Guimauve Flavoring
As with my cupcakes of the same flavor, make a caramel in a saucepan on the stovetop by heating 1/3 C brown sugar with 1 T water (do not stir, but swish pan around occasionally) until small bubbles appear on the surface. Pull the pan off the head before it burns, and stir in 1/4 tsp. fleur de sel and 3 T unsalted butter. Stir until thoroughly combined. Once cooled, mix 5 tsp. caramel into one half of the original recipe. After the marshmallow has settled into its pan, pour the remaining caramel over the marshmallow and allow to set with the marshmallow. It will run off the sides a little, but a thin layer should set on the surface.

Coat cut-out brown sugar au fleur de sel marshmallows with powdered sugar; additional fleur de sel may be added to the coating, but use sparingly as a small amount adds a lot of taste. Take care to coat the caramel side well, as the caramel tends to come off of the marshmallow surface easily, and the powdered sugar coating helps it to stick. The flavor is not strongly caramel, but a nice sweet/salty combination with buttery overtones.