A First Time for Everything

My marshmallow-making debut today.

The formatting is off a bit whenever I start a blog post on my iPhone and then finish it here on my Rose Gold MacBook. So please forgive all the extra spaces between paragraphs! A while back, I read that beauty visionary Estée Lauder loved chocolate-covered marshmallows. I think it was in something written by her granddaughter, Aerin Lauder, who is also a beauty visionary--and author, style maven, socialite, trendsetter. Williams Sonoma approached her to sell a line of AERIN tableware. She has a jewel-box shop in Southampton [I visit it on my summer day trips] and is opening a second Hamptons location.

In fact, the legendary whipper upper of beauty creams loved candy, period. When I went to a panel discussion last Saturday at the Architectural Digest Spring Design Show in NYC, Aerin said:

Estée had a little refrigerator full of candy in the family room, with boxes of candy. She would say, 'Take one, take two, take whatever you want.' She was fun.

Now that would be my kind of grandmother. Yet somehow, Aerin and her sister, Jane, are slim and beautiful, not carrying around any candy pounds.

I find it fascinating that on esteelauder.com, you can find A RECIPE! from a popular Soho chef--even a marshmallow video, which was very helpful, as the sticky confection is made, in this case, from powdered gelatin, water, light corn syrup, sugar, salt and vanilla bean seeds scraped from the pod.

You must boil the sugar syrup in a covered pan for 10 minutes, until it reaches 240 degrees F. on a candy thermometer. I do not own a candy thermometer now, so I just stuck with the 10-minute guideline. 

But the syrup was so hot and you beat it into the gelatin for so long [15 minutes] that the whisk extension on my red handheld KitchenAid mixer [the only mixer I have right now, and I've had it for years] got red hot hot hot and actually broke off at the stem. Yikes. I hope to mail the whole shebang back to KitchenAid and get a replacement, but I don't know...and plus, the postage would be a lot.

I'm proud of my kitchen crafting today. The marshmallows seem a little plain-Jane at first but then when you dip them in the dark chocolate and let it harden, they turn into glamour girls. I did eat about four of these light ladies, but packed the rest up in cellophane bags with pretty Easter stickers--to give to others. I gave a bag of six to the mom of Punchy's playmate today.

I left a baggie with three marshmallows on the kitchen table for Dan and Punch. [Darn, they almost passed vegan Figgy's test--no egg whites!--but that powdered gelatin contains collagen from animals. So, no.]

What happened to the all the rest of the marshmallows? Dan asked when he came in.

He was impressed with these. I also have to thank him for running to Kings yesterday when I said Please get me good dark chocolate, not a bag of Tollhouse chips. He came back with two nice big Scharffen Berger 70% Bittersweet Dark Chocolate Baking Bars that were on sale; but I only needed one. [I saved six naked marshmallows for the future.]

So maybe I can make them for special occasions, like Easter and Christmas. For me, it's not just about eating the sweets--it's the crafting of them. The candy-kitchen crafting. The chopping and tempering the fine rich chocolate. The dipping [I like Chef Camille Becerra's technique of using two forks.] It's a true passion for me. But as I said under my Instagram post, #backtofruitnow.

Happy Easter to you and yours. Happy Passover, too. Are these kosher? The Lauder family is Jewish. 

TCOY

1. Nice hot bath with the rest of my DollyMoo salts [made in Montclair].
2. Got to my support group, even though Dan took the car to drive Punch to her soccer game and Figgy took the bike to get to work. I walked 15 minutes to get there. Then I walked another 15 minutes in town and 25 minutes back home.
3. Had Asian salad.
4. Think I will sauté a pear now. Sis sent us fresh pears for Easter from Harry & David.