The rocky road

Ever wonder how many ways you can prepare a marshmallow to be devoured? If you answered Yes, that's wonderful. We never did. That is until we started making them, then making lots of them, then dreaming about them, and finally blogging about them.

What we've found is that there are endless ways to cut, color, flavor, and accessorize marshmallows. Some ideas have come from our customers, who are quite crafty. The most interesting idea we came away with recently was a suggestion that we incorporate or somehow theme a marshmallow after one of America's favorite ice creams, Rocky Road.

A challenge was at hand and we've been known to try different flavors whenever we have the time. How successful are we, that depends I guess on whether you like spicy, sour, or flowery mallows. I can't count any of our experiments out, somebody someday will ask us with a grin if we've tried this or that and we'll be there nodding. For our RR, we had to incorporate the main flavors of the ice cream without actually using ice cream and after a bucket, err, hour of research, we came up with a unique take on the dessert.

First, we started with a milk chocolate flavored marshmallow, although using a darker, bitter chocolate is on the "when we find a chocoholic . . ." list. Next, the nuts we went with were walnuts, because they seemed to stand out well and spread evenly and deeply throughout when mixed into a fresh batch of marshmallow. Afterwards, well, we were just kidding ourselves by going light on the chocolate; who doesn't looooove chocolate. A quick reach across the counter, a twist of a lid, and a fist full of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips were sailing into the mix. We relished stirring that pot like an eager child waiting for grandma to stop scraping the cookie dough bowl.

What we created that day left us feeling as though we caught lightning in a bottle.

We haven't taken pictures to post and even when we do, I don't recommend you lick the screen, it won't taste quite the same. What I will say is that the response has been very positive so far. Soon, we'll be offering these little crunchy, smooth, chocolatey nuggets and we think you will have one of those "wavy screen" flashbacks to us the next time you pick up a candy bar. Thank you all for following us on our little mallow path. Although we already have our Rocky Road taste-testers, we would still like to select a few of you for a little audience participation. A few interested folks will be randomly selected to do a little experiment with our signature apple. That’s about all I can divulge until a future blog, sooooooooo, if you're interested in joining us (its free, both joining and the experiment), please comment on the blog, and I will notify you by July 7th, 2009, if you are selected.