It’s a nice sunny autumn day in Libra. The week is over. The wind is crisp. It’s the perfect time to be outside roasting marshmallows over a fire-pit. I remember Boy Scout camp fires and camping with my dad as being some of my favorite times growing up. You get that smell of fresh firewood, hotdogs, popcorn and sweet s’mores together and can’t help but feel relaxed with the fire crackling in front of your warm face.
Well, not exactly Jeremy. In our house, we had a tinker toy “fire” in front of a 2 chair blanket tent with camping tapes on the VHS. S’mores were made at first in the toaster oven, then later the microwave. Mom was never the camping type and Dad never got the time. Not exactly camping, but we made it work.
On a trip to Lavenlair Farm in Lake George, we were able to grab 2 large bundles of fresh lavender. The ladies there were sweet as their special lavender honey and led us to their lavender cookbook. (Who knew you could cook with a flower?) It is super skinny, but full of different treats and sweets for including this calming herb in ways other than aromatherapy and tea. The marshmallow recipe really struck us as an amazing feat. We were promised that once we tasted these, we would never want another marshmallow out of a plastic puffy bag again. Let’s put it to the test.
First of all, we had a hard time picking off individual pieces of lavender off of the stem and measuring it into the spoon without making a mess. We found it easiest to put the measuring spoon over a small bowl. It would have saved time if we had simply bought the container of cooking lavender instead of having so much fun picking it ourselves and enjoying some purple flowered couple time.
I’ve been living with a type 1 diabetic since I was 8. Let me tell you, the sugar count in this recipe is sky-rocketing. Powdered sugar, corn syrup, gelatin and honey all together make one sugary concoction. Best to keep these for lows that need a quick burst back up if you don’t have raisins or apple juice on hand. The Spruce Eats offers this advice:
1 cup of granulated Splenda or sugar and 1 Tablespoon of corn starch blended together make just as sweet powdered sugar if the store is out. Powdered sugar is crucial here for coating the wax paper so that nothing will stick anywhere.
Monk Fruit and Stevia have also been debated as being sugar substitutes for diabetic and people who don’t want to restrict their sugar intake. Healthline has these debate points.
They won’t have much affect on blood glucose levels and have 0 calories. Both can be sweet at first, but then give a bitter after-taste.
Monk Fruit on the other hand is SUPER expensive because it’s INCREDIBLY rare. It hasn’t gotten much research at all.
Stevia on the other hand has been known to cause some bloated, gassy and nauseous feelings in some people. Those who are allergic to daisies, ragweed, chrysanthemums, and sunflowers will want to be careful of allergic reactions.
In our opinion, it’s better to just surrender to the sugar and count it on your meter.
That yellow stuff in the left corner and below is lemon zest. In this case, it refers to the colored outside of the fruit. Zest adds flavor like juice, but in a pulpy way so it’s not too moist. You see this a lot in Cupcake Wars where bakers will shave off the outside until they gets to the white bitter rinds of the peel and just use the ZEST. It’s where we get the word ZESTY as an adjective for a flavorful fruitiness or spicy quality. In short it gives it an extra kick.
We weren’t too keen on the accuracy of the directions. Yeah, for example when they said it would only be 5 min. for the batter to set. It took us more like a half hour, even with our brand new hand mixer from Christmas. Did they mean a standing mixer? Would that have whipped it faster? We don’t know. Still, it was so runny after 5 minutes. Sorry!
We let the kids (Our Build-a-Bears Emma-Belle and Prince Daniel) help decorate the swirls. She’s very creative (Note her “I Dream in Rainbow” PJs) and he likes things that are messy. The directions say to swirl and fold, but we decided to do them only on the one side. Maybe that affected the texture. We have to be careful not to change anything the first time unless it’s a minor one that won’t alter too much of the composition. Once we finished swirling, we covered the whole thing in powdered sugar.
They turned out to be more of a gummy than a pillow. It wasn’t even just us. My parents and brother agreed that they tasted more like big square gummy worms than marshmallows, but the flavors were there. For that real light and airy style, I’ll grab one of my Easter Peeps. Did you know they don’t go bad until 2 years later? The lavender really came through, but the lemon zest not so much. It must’ve been just a binder. (That thing that holds it all together) Still, we were proud that we made something like this that only comes already-made. As for preservation, refrigeration works best. But watch out, the food coloring runs all over. This was fun. Maybe we should do this for Easter. There is however 1 little side effect from these marshmallows…
