With the SHF theme of “Chocolate Brand” this recipe uses Ah!laska brand Baker’s Cocoa in the marshmallows, and Ghirardelli White Chocolate.

Amidst our delayed arrival from New Orleans I realized, I’ve been chocolate deprived. Distracted by oysters and cocktails, and having dessert for breakfast, left a large chocolate sized hole in my heart.

Chocolate swirl marshmallows sliced on edge provide a wonderful pattern to lay against softened white chocolate in this color inverted s’more… a finger licking shot of sticky sweetness with a flush of cocoa.

Zebra-striped Chocolate Swirl S’mores

Preheat your oven broiler.

Gently toast a graham cracker under the broiler. Pull it out from under the heat just before it starts to turn color.

Top with grated white chocolate (Ghirardelli White Chocolate, as it is amazingly all my super-hyped up grocery store will carry now).

Top with a slice of chocolate swirl marshmallow and place back under the broiler to toast.

Pull out from under heat when the marshmallow slightly changes color and allow to cool.

Enjoy!

My recent experimentation with black sesame paste marshmallows gave me the idea to add the chocolate at the end of mixing to minimize disruption of the marshmallow’s volume during whipping.

Here are the results of making two variations of chocolate marshmallows .

Pictured on the left is a basic vanilla marshmallow recipe.

The middle is the basic vanilla marshmallow recipe with the dissolved cocoa added after whipping; swirled in.

The right hand marshmallow is the chocolate variation suggested in the strawberry marshmallow recipe, which takes away 2/3 of the water used to bloom the gelatin and uses it to dissolve an equal amount of cocoa powder (by volume) which is all then added to the gelatin in the mixing bowl before the heated sugar syrup is added. Essentially, the cocoa added before the whipping.

The decrease in marshmallow volume is quite apparent when dissolved cocoa is added at the beginning of the whipping step.

The cocoa flavor of the swirled marshmallow is more acute though both chocolate marshmallows contain the same amount of cocoa.

Chocolate Swirl Marshmallows

amounts with in parenthesis denote half quantities

Ingredients

Cocoa Preparation

• cocoa powder, 4Tbs (2 Tbs)
• boiling water, 4Tbs (2 Tbs)

Gelatin Preparation

• gelatin envelopes: unflavored Knox brand, 2 (1)
• cold water, 1/4 c + 2 Tbs (3 Tbs)
• vanilla extract, 1 1/2 tsp (3/4 tsp)

Hot Sugar Syrup Preparation

• sugar, 1 1/2 c (3/4 c)
• water, 1/4 c +2 Tbs (3 Tbs)
• corn syrup, 1/2 c + 2T (1/4 c + 1 Tbs)
• salt, 1/4 tsp (1/8 tsp)

Marshmallow Dusting

• confectioners sugar
• rice flour

Instructions

Line an 8” x 8” pan or a 11″ x 7 ” tin (5″ x 5″ sandwich sized container) with parchment paper. Coat the paper with vegetable oil or non-stick spray.

Stir the cocoa powder with the boiling water in a small bowl and stir thoroughly to dissolve the cocoa. Set aside.

Fit a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. In the mixer bowl combine the cold water with the vanilla extract. Sprinkle the gelatin packet contents over the liquid to bloom (soften and absorb the liquid). If you have a splash guard to attach to the top edge of your mixing bowl, do so at this time.

Add the sugar, salt, corn syrup, and remaining water to a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil with the lid on and without stirring. When this mixture is at a boil, remove the lid and continue to cook without stirring until it reaches the soft-ball stage (234-240 F).

With the mixer at low speed, pour all of the hot syrup slowly down the spout of the splash guard or the side of the bowl into the awaiting gelatin mixture. Be careful as the hot syrup is very liquid and hot at this point and some may splash out of the bowl -a splash guard is highly recommended. When all of the syrup is added, bring the mixer up to medium speed for 1 minute, then bring to full speed.

Whip until the mixture is very fluffy and stiff, 8 minutes at full speed.

Stop mixer and stir in the dissolved cocoa mixture.

Immediately pour the marshmallow cocoa mixture into the parchment-lined pans and smooth with an offset spatula if necessary. Allow the mixture to sit, uncovered at room temp for 10 to 12 hours. Do not refrigerate the marshmallows.

Mix equal parts rice flour and confectioners sugar and sift generously over the rested marshmallow slab. Turn the slab out onto a cutting board, peel off paper and dust with more sugar/starch mixture. Slice with a pizza cutter or oiled knife blade into desired shapes. Dip all cut edges in sugar/starch mixture and shake off excess powder.

Marshmallows will keep several weeks at room temp in an air-tight container.

Using my Japan souvenirs, I whipped up a batch of homemade black sesame swirl marshmallows and a layered set of green tea with azuki bean.

Combined with the peppermints and the lemon-ginger, I have assembled a tasting kit of fun marshmallow flavors for my family and work place. While quite unexpected (I still have coworkers who can’t grasp the idea of homemade marshmallows), its a delightful way to share my fun in the kitchen. Mini tasting kits of just one cube per flavor would charmingly offer these sweets as treasured kitchen gems.

These last two sets of flavors gave me some good experience on working in some alternative flavor types into a basic marshmallow recipe. I hope to write up a review of how to flavor marshmallows after the holiday weekend.

These marshmallowed spoons serve as a wonderful stir-in to add a touch of sweet and flavor to tea, coffee or hot chocolate.

Made with elaborately handled spoons, these serve as a special year round gift from your kitchen.

The beet marshmallows got sprinkled with an extra bit of straight beet powder, which lent itself to look like blood clots quite splendidly. Putting them in a glass jar and relabeling them to be Liver Biopsy Samples was a bunch of fun!

To make the eyeball cupcakes, I used cake mix with my mini-muffin tins to create 44 little cupcakes out of one mix. Survivors (quality check points and all…) were dipped in Royal Icing, which needed a couple of hours to firm up, then decorated with my favorite food coloring markers.

Drawing Tips

While Royal Icing is firm, it isn’t a fool-proof drawing surface.

When mixing up the icing, air bubbles are likely to form, and rise to the top of your iced cupcakes. Bubbles left in the icing will create weak spots through which your markers will punch, creating an unsightly crater. Careful mixing of the icing by hand can help prevent their formation. If you dip your cupcakes and still see bubbles rise to the surface, pop them with a toothpick early in the process when the icing is still wet. This will allow your popped bubble to self heal.

Give the icing plenty of time to set up firm on your cupcake surface. An overnight rest would be a good idea to ensure a hardened surface to draw on.

To draw a blue eyeball:
- first draw a blue circle
- draw a blue asterisk (*) inside of the circle.
- give your asterisk more arms to fill out the circle, thus creating the iris.
- now add a black filled circle in the center to make your pupil. A nice detail is to leave a white circle with in its edge to read as a highlight on the eye.
- add in some squiggly red veins around the iris and you are done!

My plans to attend a fun food centered party up in Vancouver Washington this weekend really called for a fun potluck item. Knowing that several people attending had an objection to eating beets- this seemed like the perfect time to finally try making beet marshmallows.

The cool find of beet powder in the bulk section of the Kiva, our downtown grocery store, makes this an easy and clean recipe. The beet powder is combined with the gelatin following the recipe for basic vanilla marshmallows. Adding a touch of allspice, orange and persimmon sugar I had on hand, makes these cool little mallows evoke the sugar’ed memories of Halloween candy while adding a more earthy note of winter’s fine root offering. The beet flavor is light, and melds almost seemlessly with the allspice flavor. And the color! These babies are beautiful!

So… shall I make beet rice krispee treats with the remainder of my marshmallow stash?

pdf of basic vanilla marshmallow recipe

Beet Marshmallows
half recipe amounts also noted

gelatin envelopes 4 (2)
water ¾ cup (¼ c + 2 T)
vanilla extract ½ tsp (¼ tsp)
beet powder 2 T (1 T)
allspice ¼ tsp (1/8 tsp)
orange oil 5 drops (2 drops)

sugar 3 cups (1 ½ cups)
water ¾ cup (¼ c + 2 T)
corn syrup 1 cup (½ cup)
maple syrup ¼ c (2T)
salt ½ tsp (pinch)

rice flour
confectioners sugar

Line a 9” x 13” (half: 8” x 8”) pan and a loaf pan with parchment paper. Coat the paper with vegetable oil or non-stick spray.

Fit a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. In the mixer bowl combine the ¾ cup of water (half: ¼ c plus 2 Tbs) with vanilla extract, beet powder, allspice, and orange flavoring. Sprinkle the gelatin over the liquid to bloom (soften).

Add the sugar, salt, corn syrup, maple syrup and remaining ¾ cup water (half: ¼ c plus 2 Tbs) to a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil with the lid on and without stirring. When this mixture is at a boil, remove the lid and continue to cook without stirring until it reaches the soft-ball stage (234-240 F).

With the mixer at medium speed, pour all of the hot syrup slowly down the side of the bowl into the awaiting gelatin mixture. Be careful as the hot syrup is very liquid and hot at this point and some may splash out of the bowl – use a splashguard if you have one. When all of the syrup is added, bring the mixer up to full speed.

Whip until the mixture is very fluffy and stiff, about 8-10 minutes. Pour marshmallow into the parchment-lined pans and smooth with an oiled offset spatula if necessary. Allow the mixture to sit, uncovered at room temp for 10 to 12 hours.

Mix equal parts rice flour and confectioners sugar with a tablespoon of beet powder and sift generously over the rested marshmallow slab. Turn the slab out onto a cutting board, peel off paper and dust with more sugar/starch mixture. Slice with a pizza cutter into desired shapes. Dip all cut edges in sugar/starch mixture and shake off excess powder.

Marshmallows will keep several weeks at room temp in an air-tight container. Actually- its pretty difficult to make these go stale, I’ve tried without much success.

One of the main ways I use my own blog, is as a recipe receptacle. Here my papers don’t get lost, I don’t lose my adjustments or smudge my writing, and I can make easy recipe print outs to fall back on.

One recipe I often find myself coming to look up on my site is the basic recipe for straight-up regular vanilla marshmallows. This recipe is actually hidden within my post on making strawberry marshmallows, so it requires that I look down into the variations to double check my ingredient measurements for making this basic marshmallow composition. I’ve created a pdf of the basic vanilla marshmallow recipe for others to share, as I often wish I had this recipe nicely formatted for printing. An additional feature of this particular printout is that I have included measurements for a half-sized batch of marshmallows, the size I find myself making more frequently.

Also included at the bottom of the recipe are variation hints. The first is a reminder how to incorporate fruit puree into a marshmallow recipe to introduce flavor. The second variation is in regards to grinding up flavored candies to make up part of the sugar portion in the marshmallow recipe. Red hots worked exceptionally well in making Spicy Hot Cinnamon Marshmallows. Lemonhead candies are begging to be experimented with, as are Butterscotch Hard Candies and Root Beer Barrels.

Have fun thinking of flavors to try out!

This project isn’t very easy as it requires a lot of planning. However, when you get all your components organized, it all comes together quite well. In this post I outline how I went about making my rolls, and the assorted nigiri, with sweet candy ingredients.

Fake Sushi Rice Base

The rice for this project comes from a rice krispy treat base. This is a sticky sweet homemade snack that is beloved of most Americans, and will induce drooling upon mention. A final coating of white chocolate finishes these sushi bases.

Prepare a 9″ x 13″ baking dish by coating it in butter. Set this aside and lets get to the melting…
In a large pot over medium heat, melt 3 Tbs of butter with 1 10-oz sized bag of marshmallows. Stir the concoction over heat till the marshmallows have just melted. Now stir in 6 cups of puffed rice cereal and stir till all the cereal is coated thoroughly. Scoop out this mixture into your prepared baking sheet and with buttered hands, pat down to compress into the pan. To match the real life dimensions of sushi, we ideally want this rice krispy base to be 1 inch tall.

Forming the Rice

Shaping rice for your sweet sushi treats is best done when the krispy mixture is still slightly warm. If it cools and firms up too much, warm it slightly in the microwave for easier forming.

Rolls: The rice base for the rolls is easily shaped when one finds the appropriate sized circular object to cut out cylinders of rice krispy pieces. The average sushi roll slice is just over 1 inch across. Many circular cookie cutter packs will come with a circle small enough to cut pieces for the rolls. When in doubt- make your piece small so that it is bite sized and can be popped into your mouth in one fell swoop.
Nigiri: To shape the rice base for sushi draped nigiri, I was fortunate to have a nigiri press (featured in the picture) on hand. It produces a piece that is a 1″ x 2″ rectangle with rounded corners, much like a pillow. Alternatively, this shape can be formed by hand.

White Rice Sushi Pillows

To make these pillows of sushi rice nice and white, coat them in a thin layer of white chocolate. I found the best looking method involved dipping the cut out sushi rice forms in melted white chocolate, and then rubbing the chocolate into the crevasses, and smoothing most of it off with my fingers. This got to be a bit messy, but allowed the lumpy rice texture to come through and not get too smoothed over by the chocolate. A cleaner method may be to use a pastry brush to dab on the white chocolate.

Nigiri: the entire rice piece is coated with white chocolate.
Rolls: rolls are more easily coated when they have first had their nori dip to cover their sides, as described below. Also, rolls require that they have their toppings prepped by the time you coat the top with white chocolate.

Making Sushi Rolls

The sushi rolls are composed of four parts:
- first the rice krispy base is made and formed, as outlined above.
- secondly, each piece is dipped to create a dark nori wrapper like look. To achieve this, melt finely chopped dark chocolate in a double boiler. Toasted nori is a dark green color that almost becomes black. Adding green and black food coloring to the dark chocolate helps achieve this look. Dip each cylinder-like roll piece in your darkened chocolate so that the bottom and sides are coated. Place on a piece of wax paper to solidify.
- next, prep your toppings to give the illusion of a glimpse of something rolled up in the center of the roll. I found dried papaya to be a nice translucent color that is similar to tuna. Small squares are cut out of dried papaya that has been rolled thin, to help it sit flush on top of the roll.
- lastly, dip the top of the already nori-dipped sushi rolls in melted white chocolate. Top each freshly dipped piece with a thin square of the dried papaya.

Sushi Accessories

Keeping in mind your project to make sweet sushi, save your pieces of fake plastic grass and plastic sushi container next time you get sushi to go, or order it in a restaurant. These are great props to use with your sweet sushi pieces.

Wasabi: when all of your rice pieces have been dipped and coated in the melted white chocolate, add a couple of drops of green food coloring to make a nice wad of green tinted white chocolate for your wasabi.

Nori belts: an important component to many pieces of nigiri is that slender belt of nori wrapped that binds them to the rice pillow. To achieve this look, spread a layer of darkened nori-looking chocolate on a sheet of wax paper. Before the chocolate hardens, cut long strips of the paper with a pair of kitchen scissors. Set these aside till needed, or immediately wrap around your desired concoction. Be careful though, the hardened chocolate will be prone to cracking if these strips of paper are moved a lot.

To rewarm a chocolate nori belt: bring a pot with 2 inches of water to a boil. Gently pick up a strip of hardened chocolate and move it about in the warm steam of the boiling water. When the chocolate looks softened, which will happen quickly, drape onto your sushi concoction and wrap the piece of chocolate around, trimming the too long strip when the chocolate is soft.

Making Tamago

Tamago is a thin sweet egg omlette that is rolled while it cooks. To achieve this fluffy egg like look, make up a small batch of homemade vanilla marshmallow. Add a drop of lemon flavoring at the end and in the very last moments of mixing add yellow food coloring. Pour out your whipped yellow marshmallow mixture onto a Silpat or on a piece of oiled waxed paper. Allow to set up over night.

Roll the set up yellow marshmallow so that it is largely rectangular and so that the cross section is just larger than the rice pillow. Looking at this picture is a better way to understand what a rolled tamago omlette should look like. A note is that the tamago should be placed onto the rice pillow so that the omlette swirl is facing up, not out to he sides like in my picture here. One centimeter thick slices are cut off of the roll with scissors, and placed onto the rice pillow swirl up. A nori belt is the finishing touch.

Making Salmon

Dried fruit does a wonderful job at mimicking sliced fish. For the salmon in this project I used dried cantaloupe, that I rolled out into a thin sheet with a rolling pin, and then cut to size. The salmon nigiri I have encountered, don’t include a nori belt. Just drape the cut piece of dried fruit across the rice pillow to finish your salmon sushi.

Making Ebi

The task of making fake shrimp that matched up with this sweet sushi, fell into the wonderful world of marshmallow. Taking a cue from the industrial process of candy making, freshly whipped up marshmallow can be poured into mold shapes that are pressed into a bed of cornstarch. The cornstarch is easily remoldable, packs into shapes nicely, and leaves a nice surface on the resulting marshmallow.




Molding the shrimp: To make a pressed cornstarch mold for the shrimp, a piece of Sculpey clay (clay that is baked in your oven to harden) was formed into a shrimp of the appropriate shape and size. This fake shrimp is the positive for the mold. A box of cornstarch was poured into a 8″ x 8″ baking sheet. The mold positive was then wrapped in a plastic bag and pressed down on to the surface of the cornstarch leaving an impression of the shrimp. Freshly whipped marshmallow is gently poured into the shrimp depressions of the cornstarch mold and allowed to set up overnight.




Painting the shrimp: googling the words shrimp and sushi give a good sampling of shrimp pigment images. The main emphasis of the shrimp patter seems to be alternating bands of shrimpy-pink/orange with a strip of pure white. I used my food coloring markers for this project and found the pink marker to carry a lot of orange in its color. Paint on thick stripes of color, and with water, soften the tail end of the color stripe.

The finished marshmallow shrimp is draped over a rice pillow with out a nori belt.

Making Unagi

Homemade marshmallow also contributes to the making of the eel, the final piece of our sushi spread. After pouring vanilla marshmallow into the above shrimp molds, I poured a small thin slab of the remaining marshmallow onto an oiled piece of wax paper. After the marshmallow sets up, a trapezoid shape is cut out and draped over a rice pillow. Using a blowtorch, one side of the marshmallow is carefully toasted to a nice golden brown, recreating the broiled surface of eel. The piece is finished with a nori belt.

A dish of sushi roll pieces, and an assortment of sweet nigiri… now you are a sweet sushi making connaisseur!

Just in time for April Fools…

This last week, my kitchen has been filled with rice crispie treats, and marshmallows galore! A truism that I forgot is that if making sushi is difficult- then the same goes for making fake sushi. I used rice crispie treats as the rice form, which was brushed with white chocolate to make it look more rice like. The toppings are a combination of fruit and marshmallow magic. The nori wrappers are chocolate melted with a touch of corn syrup and tinted with black and green food coloring.

Surprisngly, these are not sugar bombs. The outer coating of white chocolate tends to temper the over all flavor of sweetness when popped in your mouth. To recreate tamago, a rolled sweet egg omlette, I flavored a small batch of homemade marshmallows with lemon and colored it with a touch of food coloring. The marshmallow mix was spread out and rolled up when more solid. This treat of lemon with white chocolate is particularly tasty! The two flavors are quite mellow and light together. The recreation of a nice slice of salmon came from some nice dried fruit. Using either dried papaya or dried cantaloupe, roll it flat with a rolling pin and then cut it to size. As the dried fruit is very sweet, it benefits from being rolled thin to minimize its flavor dominance.

The shrimp was a tough one to recapture! Molded marshmallows created in a mold of cornstarch and then colored with my food coloring markers. That one was difficult! Another favorite piece of sushi- broiled eel, or unagi was completed with a small cut piece of vanilla marshmallow slab that was toasted and then belted with chocolate.

All in all, a fun adventure of candy making fun!

I’ve long admired ReadyMade’s fun projects ever since their cover project of a sod couch for your yard sprouted up.

The blog aspect to the website extension of the magazine is fairly new. What first got my attention were the posts coming from Megan Reardon, of notmartha.org fame. Most recently she posted a nod to 101 Cookbooks recent recipe for DIY Girl Scout cookies.

In the tradition of HDYGTFAJ, I sent a similarly flavored email to Readymade asking about blogging opportunities. The positive response is a good reminder that- it rarely hurts to ask!

Mostly web highlights with dreams of more original content, this blog is striking me more and more as the DIY’ers version of BoingBoing.