recipe: s'mores icebox pie

I'm generally a proponent of making food from nothing more than recipe scraps, raw ingredients, motley kitchen equipment, and your own wits. Some days, that's just not feasible. Perhaps -- just for example, mind -- you spent the night before a potluck luncheon out until four in the morning watching Magic Mike and then, unrelatedly yet thematically, helping an erstwhile Atlantan introduce her new husband to the Clermont Lounge.

Perhaps not. The point here is that we all experience lapses in baking-from-scratch capacity, whatever the cause. For those days, it's good to have a backup plan that will allow you to maintain your reputation as an impressive baker with a minimum of work.

Enter the kitchen blowtorch.






S'mores Icebox Pie
Idea adapted very, very loosely from Epicurious (more about that below). You'll need a culinary blowtorch -- I love mine. Serves eight to twelve.

INGREDIENTS

a prepared 9-inch graham cracker pie crust
a 5-6 oz. box (or the equivalent weight in smaller boxes) of your favorite stovetop chocolate pudding mix
whole milk OR half & half (however much the pudding box tells you you'll need)
a bag of marshmallows, regular- or mini-sized (you'll use ~5 oz.)
 
METHOD

Prepare pudding according to directions on box. If you've got some cocoa powder in the house, toss a couple tablespoons in there for bonus flavor. When it's thickened to your liking, immediately pour pudding into pie crust and smooth surface with the back of a large spoon.

Refrigerate -- uncovered if your fridge isn't stinky, or covered loosely with aluminum foil if it is -- for at least 3 hours, until pudding is more firm than wiggly. I don't recommend covering the pie with the crust package lid -- the crust will get soggy around the edges from condensation.

When everyone's just about ready for dessert, prepare your marshmallows. If you have mini marshmallows, this will consist of opening the bag. If you have larger 'mallows, cut them into rough thirds or smaller -- kitchen shears work best for this. Cut up enough to cover the entire surface of the pie in heaps.

Get your pie out of the fridge. (If you covered it, take care -- lots of condensation will have collected on the cover. Once it's off you can dab any droplets from the pie's surface with a paper towel.) Slice the pie.

Working with one slice at a time, plate the pie. Pile marshmallows on top of the slice at hand, completely covering the surface. Set your blowtorch's gas output to low and hold the torch 4+ inches away from the marshmallows. Roast 'em, rotating the plate to get as much caramelization from as many angles as possible. Blow out any lingering flames. Serve.


ADDITIONS, SUBS, AND ALTERNATE IDEAS:

You could probably add a tablespoon of whatever booze you like to the pudding during cooking for extra flavor. Whiskey or something orangey would be nice. And I'd be curious to see whether it'd be possible to use a jar of marshmallow fluff in place of the 'mallows.

Now, if you're having the kind of day where you feel like a superhero of baking, you could just go ahead and make the aforementioned Chocolate S'more Pie from Epicurious. I did that one Thanksgiving and it was fairly spectacular(ly messy):




The marshmallow layer is browned under the broiler -- which the chocolate layer can stand up to 'cause it's a very thick baked custard.


Photos by Maria Melee. At the moment, I was up to my elbows in molten marshmallow.

If you try anything different, let me know how it comes out!

recipe: homemade marshmallows

Ever since I realized that it's within my power to make marshmallows, I, like a young god high on new-found might & processed sugar, have made a lot of marshmallows. I'm still experimenting with flavors but I've got the technique pretty well down, so I figured I'd share.



What follows is the base recipe. It's kinda long because a) I talk a lot and b) sugar is terrifying so I wanted to explain myself superextra clearly. To minimize v-scroll here, I'll do a followup post in a couple days with some notes on flavorings.





Homemade Marshmallows
Adapted from Alton Brown. You can watch the 'Puff the Magic Mallow' episode of Good Eats to see the general process, but I actually don't recommend following all of his instructions from that episode.
Makes ~24 1.5-inch marshmallows or ~32 1-inch marshmallows


INGREDIENTS

1 package gelatin
1/6 cup cold water

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1/6 cup water
Pinch salt

1/3 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup powdered sugar

~1/2 tbsp butter or oil or etc. for greasing


EQUIPMENT

Stand mixer with whisk attachment
2 spatulas (preferably 1 stiff one for scraping and 1 large & softer one for pressing)
Medium saucepan
Bread pan
Fine-mesh sieve (you can also use a tea strainer with patience)
1 ramekin/small bowl
1 small (~1-cup) container with lid
Candy or probe thermometer
Timer


PREP

Working with sugar is scary because it requires both speed and caution. I like to prepare all of my ingredients & equipment before I start so's I won't forget something and end up with no place to put boiling edible napalm. So.

Prep the gelatin: Empty 1 packet of gelatin into a small bowl or ramekin. Add 1/6 cup of cold water (you can go over by a couple teaspoons), stir, and set aside to bloom (i.e., absorb the water and soften).

Prep the sugar: Add your sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 1/6 cup of water to a medium saucepan. You don't even need to stir it. Set aside.

Prep the powder coating: Measure your cornstarch and powdered sugar into a small bowl or resealable container. Stir to combine but don't worry about it being lumpy -- you'll be sifting it onto everything anyway. Set aside.

Prep the equipment: Grease everything. Grease the bowl of the mixer up to the rim. Grease the heads of 2 spatulas. Grease your bread pan up to the rim. If your cat likes to get all up in your fries while you're cooking, grease your cat. (It'll thank you later.) Use whatever fat and application method you like best -- I like peeling the paper back from the end of a stick of butter and rubbing it over the surface of the object to be greased, then using my fingers to apply the coat evenly and completely.

Okay.


METHOD

Set up your stand mixer so it's ready to go, and add the bloomed block of gelatin to the mixer bowl. Get out your candy or probe thermometer.

Next you're gonna cook the sugar mixture to the soft ball stage (240 degrees F/120 C). Place your saucepan full'o'sugarstuff over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally to ensure even heating. (Because sugar likes being in a crystal state, you generally don't want to agitate sugar mixtures by stirring them -- if you stir, it'll be more likely for a rogue sugar crystal to become the nucleation center of crystallization and make the mixture go grainy. Corn syrup, being syrupy & therefore a stabilizer, helps prevent that, and that's why candy recipes call for it.) When the sugar starts to bubble, place your thermometer of choice in the pan and swirl the mixture continually until the sugar reaches 240 degrees F (120 C). Immediately take the pan off the heat. Turn your stand mixer on its lowest setting, and slowly (carefully, respectfully) pour the sugar syrup down the side of the mixer bowl towards the bottom. The goal here is to keep the syrup moving without risking it hitting the whisk and splattering you. That would be bad.

Once all/most of the syrup is in the mixer (a little syrup loss is totally acceptable), crank the mixer up through its settings until it's going full-tilt. Set a timer for 15 minutes.

While the mixer's doing its thang, prepare your bread pan: Put a tablespoon or two of your powder mixture in the fine-mesh sieve and tap a good, thick layer of powder into the bottom of the pan, and a finer coating up along the sides. Unlike buttering & flouring a pan for baking, you don't want to tap the edges of the pan to move the powder around -- it'll clump and stick. Just sift it in there and set the pan aside until the timer goes off.

When the timer goes off, peer into your mixer bowl and take note of the texture of the batter -- it'll be sticky and stringy as the whisk moves through it. Measure out your vanilla extract, turn the mixer speed down to low, and pour in the vanilla. Give it a few seconds to incorporate, then turn the mixer speed back up to high for ~1 minute, or until the 'mallow batter reaches about the same stringy consistency that it had before you added the vanilla.

Time to get the marshmallow batter into the pan. You'll have to work very quickly because the batter will become stiff and difficult to remove from the mixer's bowl in less than a minute. Put your greased spatulas within reach and turn off the mixer. Clean off the mixer's whisk first, using one spatula to gather batter and the second to scrape the batter off the first spatula and into the mixing bowl (or straight into the waiting bread pan, whichever's easier depending on your mixer setup). Using the same gather/scrape method, firmly scrape the rest of the batter out of the mixing bowl and into the pan. You can just kinda glop it in there -- the important thing is getting as much as possible out of the bowl before it sets.

Once you've got all the batter you're gonna get in the pan, use your spatulas to press the batter down into the pan evenly, pushing it into the corners and flattening it out. You should still be working kinda quickly, but this part is much more forgiving. Don't be afraid to press down pretty firmly. If any unaesthetic ridges or stringy trails form along the surface, just run your hands under the faucet, flick off the excess water, and gently smooth the batter out with your damp fingertips.

When you're satisfied with your 'mallow loaf, set the pan somewhere where it won't be disturbed for ~4 hours (or up to overnight). You can tent it very loosely with tin foil or a paper towel if you're afraid of things (dust, kids, dogs, etc.) getting into it, but you really want the loaf to be able to breathe and dry out, so don't cover it completely.

(Cleaning up after this step won't be as terrifying as it seems 'cause marshmallow goo, while tough to wrangle out of a bowl and into a pan, is easy to wash up. It's made entirely of things that dissolve in water. Yay science!)

Once the loaf has rested for 4+ hours, get out a cutting board and sift a good layer of your powder mix on its surface. Sift a layer of the powder on top of the 'mallow loaf, too, then turn the loaf out onto the cutting board. Cut the loaf into 3 or 4 strips lengthwise, dust the whole thing with more powder, and dip the cut edges of the strips into the powder on the board. Then push the strips back together into loaf form and cut the strips widthwise into squares (or rectangles, rhombuses, or other quadrilaterals; no one will care if the delicious homemade marshmallows you give them are kinda misshapen). Dust the whole thing with yet more powder.

Pull one of the marshmallows away from the rest, dip each cut side in the powder on the board, and then dust the excess powder off with your fingers, taking special care to make sure that there's no buildups of powder stuck in the marshmallow's crags and crevices (that would not be delicious, and can get gross and grainy if you let it sit).* Toss the finished marshmallow back into a large plastic bag (don't cramp your 'mallows). Repeat with each of the marshmallows.

*Boyfriend's hack for this step, which works nearly as well and takes like three seconds rather than 15 minutes: Pull a couple handfuls of well-powdered marshmallows apart from each other and toss them in a colander, then, over your sink, shake and toss the marshmallows to coat with powder.

You can store the marshmallows for up to a month in a sealed plastic bag or other airtight container -- they might get a bit stale around the edges after the first couple weeks, but will still be delicious, especially when roasted over fire/melted in cocoa.

foodpr0n: homemade cocoa marshmallows

The first thing you learn when you make marshmallows from scratch is that Ghostbusters was lying to you. That is not how marshmallow goop behaves. (They used shaving cream.) Actual marshmallow goop is far more insidious, more inexorable, more sticky than the deceptively benign horrors that our comedic but intrepid heroes faced back in 1984.

That said, the payoff of working with marshmallow goop is well worth the effort:



I'd be posting a recipe right now, but at this point I'd just be plagiarizing Alton Brown's excellent instructions. I'll get back to you later, once I've had the chance to perfect a few wacky flavors.

These cocoa marshmallows were made exactly according to Alton's recipe, except I only made 1/3rd of the recipe (which fit perfectly in a bread pan) and added 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder to the 'mallow batter in addition to the vanilla (having turned the beater speed down first and up again afterwards to prevent splatter), plus another 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to the cornstarch/powdered sugar coating mixture.





Of course, s'mores had to happen immediately.



The only potential downside here is that now I want to make marshmallows in all the flavors. Like banana, and espresso, and Nutella, and whiskey, and caramel, and chai, and Earl Grey. It'll be the tastiest pain in the ass there ever has been.