do not try this at home

I should learn.  (you'd think we would.)

I bake bread weekly, 'cause the girls balk at eating any other (they'll do it grudgingly).  We make homemade pizza about 2/3d's of the weeks we eat it (the other weeks, I'm too tired/busy.  And the girls eat takeout pizza grudgingly.)  We make pretty much all our own cookies, muffins, sweet breads, snacks.  Make my own granola (oh, yeah, need to do that today).  Make our own ice cream.

Yes, yes; we're extremely spoiled, I realize that.

But we should have Stopped While We were Ahead.

We had to go and make our own marshmallows.

Please, save yourself the pain and torture and just keep buying the 99-cent bags from the grocery store...  if you try these, you'll be up to your elbows in boiling sugar and whipped egg whites, then spend an afternoon poking a sticky pan of white fluff trying to figure out when it's ready to cut.

(Note: next time, make in afternoon or evening, and wait until overnight to cut.  Saves so much impatience.)

Actually we learned a lot making these, and will change a lot for next time.  The recipe we used is from the lovely, but vaguely instructed, River Cottage Family Cookbook.  I do love this cookbook so, but it would be nice to know that "beating until thick" could require up to 10 minutes or more, as I found on-line.

So, I'd love to post a recipe for you, but I'd like to tweak ours first and really figure it out.  I just had to share the lovely, and to let you know, truly, don't be scared of doing this yourself.  Just keep the little ones away from the boiling sugar, and give yourself enough time.  You won't regret it!

(well, you will regret it, you know, because you won't be able to buy those tasteless white cylinders in a bag ever ever again.  at least without thinking, "I could be eating real marshmallows.")

p.s.  The latter cuts of these, I dredged in cocoa powder.  I can't even talk about this, they're so incredibly good.  Let's just not go there.  But don't say I didn't warn you.