Experimenting with Flavouring
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m a massive fan of peanut butter – give me something peanut buttery and I’ll be one very happy lady. It turns out lots of you are too, judging from the number of pleas for “more peanut butter stuff!” I’ve received recently.
With this in the back of my mind I decided to come up with a new peanut buttery treat to share with you this week. After a quick peruse of my bookshelf and cupboard it was easy enough to come up with an idea – how about peanut butter marshmallow?
I based the recipe around a little bottle of peanut butter essence I’d picked up while in America – I’d use that to give the marshmallow flavour, rather than worrying about messing up the chemistry with thick peanut butter. So I got into making the marshmallow using this recipe, just switching out the peppermint essence for peanut butter essence. Easy enough, right?
Yes and No. Yes, it was totally easy and the marshmallow tastes great. No, it doesn’t taste anything like peanut butter. Not even a little bit.
As I added the essence to the mixture I thought “it doesn’t really smell like peanut butter…”, but happily tossed it in anyway. As I mixed it in, the scent hit me like a wave – I couldn’t quite place it, but knew it was certainly not peanut butter!
While the marshmallow was setting, I tried to place what it smelt like and decided on buttered popcorn – definitely what the little bottle claimed to be!
After leaving it to set over night I sliced, rolled and dried that popcorn-y marshmallow, readying it for the all-important taste test. I hadn’t mentioned any of my flavour concerns to Kevin, who was doing the honour of being first taste tester, instead wanting an unbiased first-impression on what it actually tasted like.
The verdict?
“Caramel popcorn!” he exclaimed as soon as swallowed his first piece. “Exactly like the stuff in the bags at the movies!” I gave a piece to our new roomie, Matt, who confirmed Kevin’s tastebuds as being spot on.
It’s an unusual flavour – I’m not sure I would have ever thought to make marshmallow that tasted like candied popcorn – but a tasty one none the less. I had to bat Kevin’s hands away from the marshmallow several times while I was waiting for a chance to photograph them – if he’d had his way there’d be no photos and he’d have a very marshmallowy tummy – so it must’ve been good. It is his favourite type of popcorn after all!
I still want to make some authentic peanut butter marshmallow, though will definitely be using real peanut butter rather than trying to cheat with essence! All’s well that ends well though – this was definitely a tasty experiment!
Kirsten
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