Marshmallows get bought in November for hot chocolate and forgotten by February. They're considerably more useful than that.
Rocky road
The single best use for a bag of mini mallows, and it requires no baking. Melt 200g dark or milk chocolate with 100g butter and two tablespoons of golden syrup. Stir in 150g broken digestives and 100g mini marshmallows once the mixture has cooled slightly — add them too early and they dissolve. Press into a lined tin, chill for two hours, cut into squares.
Mini mallows work far better than full-size here; they distribute properly rather than forming pockets.
S'mores, indoors
You don't need a campfire. Digestive biscuit, square of chocolate, marshmallow, thirty seconds under a hot grill, second biscuit on top. Watch it — marshmallows go from golden to carbon in about ten seconds.
Fluffernutter
An American classic that hasn't travelled well but should have. Melt marshmallows gently with a splash of milk until they become a spreadable fluff, then spread on bread with peanut butter. It sounds excessive. It is excessive. It's also very good.
Baking and decorating
Mini marshmallows hold their shape in a hot oven better than most people expect — useful for topping brownies in the last five minutes, or for building anything a child has requested. Pink and white together are the traditional choice for cake decoration; white-only gives you a cleaner finish if you're piping colour on top.
The vegan problem, and the solution
Standard marshmallows are built on gelatine — it's what creates the structure. That rules them out for vegans and vegetarians, and it's why vegan marshmallows were poor for so long.
Vidal's Veggie Marshmallows solve it with carrageenan (a seaweed extract) and hydrolysed rice protein instead. The texture is genuinely close to the real thing, and they behave normally in hot chocolate and in rocky road. They're in our Vegan collection.
One thing to watch: Haribo Chamallows Pink & White contain carmine (E120), an insect-derived colouring, so they're not vegetarian even though the white-only version's issue is gelatine rather than colouring. If you're catering for a mixed group, the Vidal ones are the safe choice.
Storage
Airtight, room temperature, away from radiators. Marshmallows go hard in the fridge and sticky in heat. If they've gone slightly firm, a few seconds in the microwave brings them back.
Browse the range in Marshmallows.