Mmm, marshmallows
Have you ever been scrolling through Pinterest looking at all the yummy food and recipe ideas, and decided that you have to try all the things, ALL AT ONCE?
Yep, me too. Looking at marshmallow ideas for future camping trips.
So I announced to my family that Saturday was going to be all about marshmallows. Specifically, s’mores and anything else marshmallow-related to toast over the coals of our BBQ (grill) in the backyard. I’d have to say they were pretty pleased with my bright idea.
S’mores (UK style)
We’ve made our own version of s’mores on nearly all of our camping trips. We’re big fans of the delicious combination of toasted marshmallow with a piece of chocolate sandwiched between two crunchy biscuits (cracker type-cookies?…I’m trying to think of the best way here to describe UK biscuits to my American readers…. )
We’ve never had traditional American-style s’mores as we can’t purchase graham crackers in the UK, so we experimented with a couple of different types of store-bought biscuits/cookies.
I don’t tolerate fructose very well, so need to be careful about ingredients in manufactured food. I need to avoid anything that contains, glucose-fructose syrup, high fructose corn syrup, or invert sugar syrup. When it comes to biscuits/cookies this can be tricky, but I have found two types that I can eat that are delicious and make excellent s’mores!
- Digestive biscuits – specifically Hovis Digestives (Hovis brand doesn’t use glucose-fructose syrup, unlike another well-known digestive biscuit brand here). And they have a lovely wheaty taste and a nice crumbly texture.
- Choco Leibniz – these are German but available in most supermarkets here in the UK. Their tagline is “more chocolate than biscuit”, which is of course, a wonderful thing! You can get milk or dark chocolate varieties – dark chocolate is our favourite.
As it’s raspberry season in Scotland at the moment, I decided to make our s’mores extra delicious by adding a raspberry to the combination of biscuit, marshmallow and chocolate. Yum. A definite hit!
If you don’t have fresh raspberries available, I’m sure raspberry jam or preserve would be just as delicious. As would strawberries, blueberries or bananas.
As we had plenty of raspberries I decided to keep to the raspberry/marshmallow theme going with…
Marshmallow and Raspberry-stuffed cones
I’d seen many images of campfire cones on Pinterest and was really keen to try them. All you need is:
- ice-cream cones (any type would work but we used waffle cones)
- marshmallows
- fruit of your choice (we used raspberries)
- chocolate (either mini chunks or chocolate chips, or broken up pieces – we also added fudge pieces – yum)
- tinfoil
Just stuff the cone with marshmallows, fruit and chocolate, then wrap it in tinfoil. Place the cone into the coals or on the grill for 1 or 2 minutes.
On our first attempt, the cone got a wee bit charred, as we left it too long. So watch (and smell) carefully – they really don’t need long. However, even with a partially charred cone, the inside mixture of melted marshmallows, chocolate and raspberry was still delicious.
(By the way, if you haven’t got a grill or campfire, or the patience to watch them carefully when they are on the coals, these marshmallow and raspberry stuffed cones are pretty yummy just as they are.)
Marshmallow Meringue Nests
These are made pretty much the same way as campfire cones but you substitute a meringue nest for the cone. Meringue nests are easily available at the supermarket, but if you are super-keen you could make your own.
Again, keep a careful eye on them, they don’t need much time. Warm meringue tastes amazing with berries and melted chocolate, and the added marshmallows just take it to another level of deliciousness.
Marshmallow-stuffed Raspberries
We used mini-marshmallows for these, but you could cut up larger marshmallows as well. Just pop the marshmallows inside the raspberries, put into a heat-safe bowl and put them on the grill. Yum!
and to finish… Toasted Marshmallow Shot Glasses
This fabulous idea from The Watering Mouth looks amazing, so I was desperate to try it. However…confession…I couldn’t get this to work for us. Our marshmallows didn’t “implode” enough – so sadly there just wasn’t enough space inside them to pour in any liqueur.
Not wanting to waste any toasted, partially imploded marshmallows though, I can confirm that marshmallows eaten after being dipped into a glass of liqueur (I used Baileys) are delicious!
Never one to give up on a great idea though, I’ll be sure to attempt the marshmallow shot glass again at some point in the future!
What’s your favourite marshmallow-related treat when camping?
