Vegan Marshmallows, Baby

I have two words for you.

Vegan. Marshmallows.

I kid you NOT. After the last debacle around vegan marshmallows made with Emes not-at-all-vegan Sure-Gel it has been kind of a lost junk food. That brown rice based fluff stuff was OK for making rice krispy treats, but it wasn’t something you could put on a stick and potentially light on fire. And the so-called strawberry version of the stuff? One bite and I took to referring to it as “Soylent Pink”.

This year Chicago Soy Dairy came launched Dandies marshmallows on the vegan world. Soft, squishy, tasty, able to be skewered upon a stick, stuck into fire, and ignited!! Yes, real flames!

If you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ll be honest. I’ve kind of missed marshmallows. I haven’t had one in about 9 years and I was kind of nostalgic for a marshmallow toasted over a real fire. I’ve been reading blog posts and tweets galore about Dandies so when we were by Food Fight this past Saturday we picked up a bag to take to a birthday party, with a campfire, that evening.

We pulled out our fancy marshmallows, spent several minutes explaining that “regular” marshmallows are made with gelatin, listening to the smart-ass jokes (these seem to nearly always ensue when omnivores feel defensive about their food choices, but want to be polite), building a fire, letting it die down enough, and waiting for the birthday girl to find us something stick like.

The only thing that would have improved the experience is a longer stick. I’m not one who goes for the charcoal effect. Someone else was delighted to discover that the vegan marshmallows light on fire just like the “real thing”. I grew out of that and generally prefer a long, slow, methodical toast to golden brown.

The bamboo skewers were just too short for this approach without seriously scorching my fingers (worse). However, the result I could manage before the heat drove me back was very satisfyingly bubbly, lightly toasted, and gooey on the inside! I so look forward to trying this out with some dark chocolate, graham crackers and a better stick!