Gingerbread Marshmallows
Festive Confectionary and the Inspiration Behind Them - Extra Food Chat with Kath
Welcome back to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!
November was a crazy whirlwind of bubble wrap, boxes and wondering how on earth do I have so much stuff!? There’s nothing like packing up your whole life to make you question everything you’ve ever bought, been given or inherited haha.
Our move is just over a week away, so I’ve got this post ready in advance along with all the others for this month so we can enjoy the festive season while I finish packing and actually move out (then most likely collapse in a heap). For this first edition of Extra Food Chat, I am diving into festive confectionery making, and remembering the influences of my love of marshmallows.
I have always been a lover of marshmallows. I adored them as a child, the kinds that are sickly sweet that you can get in the supermarket. I loved them melted in a bowl with some Rice Bubbles mixed in, like a deconstructed LCM bar. I don’t like those kinds of marshmallows anymore, and I can see why some people don’t like marshmallows if those are the only ones they’ve tried.
When I was at uni I discovered a confectionary shop in Epping (in Sydney) called Sweetness the Patisserie. I can’t quite remember how I found out about this shop, it may have been from seeing them at a market stall somewhere. The owner Gena and her team made the most delicious things, and my favourite was the marshmallows (or sweetmallows as they called them). They were always cut in generous cubes and the flavours were interesting. Most importantly they were nothing like the marshmallows of my childhood!
The Sweetness marshmallows used real flavour like passionfruit pulp or proper vanilla paste to give their marshmallows a hit of flavour that was delicate and more-ish, and the complete opposite to the mass produced marshmallows from the supermarkets.
I loved their passionfruit marshmallows, their coconut ones, the strawberries and cream, the rose ones and at Christmas, their gingerbread marshmallows. Gena and the team did some amazing Christmas products, that I still miss to this day (and I think Sweetness has been closed at least 10 years now). The marshmallows were used in their rocky road as well, which made it the nicest rocky road ever. They even made a white chocolate version so non chocolate eaters like me could still enjoy it (something I find quite rare with many confectioners/choclatiers). At Christmas they made massive logs of rocky road that were excellent for sharing or giving as gifts. Everything looked spectacular and was packaged and wrapped with care and always presented so well.
The marshmallow recipe below, and the others I have posted on my blog over the years are heavily influenced by Gena and Sweetness the Patisserie. Gena many years ago shared her marshmallow recipe with Heilala Vanilla (whose products she used and sold in her shop) which I recall getting a pamphlet of at a food or cake expo one time, plus it used to be on their website. I’ve been making it ever since, trying to recreate the delicious memories of Sweetness the Patisserie and their famous marshmallows.
This gingerbread marshmallow is a recreation of what I remember buying and enjoying from Sweetness the Patisserie many years ago, and all credit for the excellent base marshmallow recipe I have used here (and many times previously), and my love of proper homemade marshmallows, goes to the incredibly talented Gena and her much missed, Sweetness the Patisserie.
When I made these back in early October I shared them with colleagues and I was told they ‘tasted like Christmas’. That’s exactly what I was going for, so if you want a little kitchen project that tastes ‘like Christmas’ in a mouthful, give these a go.
The edited and tested recipe for these Gingerbread Marshmallows is below for paid subscribers.
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