You know what’s great? Marshmallows. You know what’s better? Toasted marshmallows. You know what beats even *that*? S’MORES.
For the uninitiated, these are traditional campfire fare, super popular in the US, and consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker (which is a wafer-like cracker).
Thing is, you can’t really get Graham crackers in the UK, and plus, Boudicca is all about British foods. Hmm.
Enter; the British s’more.
Props to Frank at going for seconds for giving me the inspiration for this one. I’ve had a cupboard full of Mallow and Marsh marshmallows for a while, and have been debating what to do with them.
I discovered Mallow and Marsh at Taste of Winter last year, and spent a while with them, getting very excited about their Toasted Coconut variant. The Mallow and Marsh ethos is ‘not many things get better with fire’, and so I’d been toying with a way to do them justice. The opportunity to combine all of these things, AND bring the humble McVitie’s Digestive in the mix was too tempting to ignore.
A word on Mallow and Marsh; started with just £250, and using kickstarter to fund growth in August of last year, the company has fast grown to become one of the most popular sweet treats in the UK. Founder Harriot Pleydell-Bouverie also went on to Dragon’s Den, and turned down five figure funding offers to remain independent.
Mallow and Marsh’s gourmet mallows are made without dairy, egg, gluten or wheat, so fall into the ‘guilt free’ treat pot, though some (like the chocolate peppermint) are a little naughtier. They stay true to ‘traditional’ taste and texture, but spice things up with some incredible flavours. I really do think they’re best toasted, but they’re delicious enough to have as is, straight from the box.
Back to the s’mores. It’s a simple process. The McVitie’s chocolate digestives come pre-chocolated (obviously), so they’re easy to work with, and with a blow torch to hand (or campfire, microwave or whatever), heating your marshmallow and wedging it between two biscuits to form some delightful mash up of gooey deliciousness takes just minutes. We used the Mallow and Marsh vanilla flavour (one marshmallow is the perfect size for s’mores) with the milk chocolate McVitie’s for a twist on the classic, and mixed it up, using the raspberry ones with the dark chocolate biscuits. The former was awesome, the latter was A TASTE SENSATION.
Watch outs; these bad boys are pretty sweet, so you won’t need many, the mallows are naturally low in fat, so go slow with your heating as they’re quick to burn. We found the best way is to put a biscuit on a plate, pop the marshmallow on top, then ‘skim’ the fire over the top, as you can see, we tried doing it on a fork first, and failed miserably. Also, plates are your friend, or actually, anything to catch molten mallowy-chocolateness.
Buy Mallow and Marsh online here, at £3 for an individual box of three, or in ‘best seller’ boxes, at £12 for 12.