Marshmallow Fluff and the Birth of Impressionsim

American Dessert

MARSHMALLOW FLUFF

INGREDIENTS

3 egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
⅔ cup light corn syrup
¾ cup sugar
⅓ cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater (with whisk attachment if you have it)
saucepan*
candy thermometer

* = Like a pot, but with a handle. Like a frying pan, but with higher, vertical sides. Having a saucepan is important to this recipe.

Makes 3 cups. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add egg whites and cream of tartar to mixing bowl. Whip with electric beater until soft peaks form. Add corn syrup, sugar, and water to sauce pan. Stir until well blended. Don’t do anymore stirring. Heat syrup using medium-high until temperature on candy thermometer reaches 240 degrees. (About 10 minutes.) Remove from heat.

Set electric beater to medium. While beating, slowly pour sugary corn-syrup mixture into bowl with whipped egg whites.(Make sure that this mixture doesn’t get on the electric beater.) Beat sugar/corn syrup/egg mixture at high speed for 9 minutes or until becomes, fluffy, and shiny. Add vanilla extract and beat or medium setting for 1 minute. The marshmallow fluff will keep in the fridge for about 2 weeks, if placed in a Mason jar, or any other tightly sealed jar.

Marshmallow fluff is an essential ingredient in fluffernutter sandwiches. See recipe below.

TIDBITS

1) There would never have been the art movement but for the invention of marshmallow fluff.

2) For on July 14, 1854 young and hungry Claude Monet found himself lying on his back in a nearby field. He spied some wonderfully formed clouds. “Each cloud looks like 3 egg whites. ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, ⅔ cup light corn syrup. ¾ cup sugar. ⅓ cup water, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.”

3) Actually, all French clouds look like that.

4) This discovery began the French people’s obsession with food. I mean clouds were everywhere in France. Even to this day.

5) Anyway, little Claudie went home to cook up a tremendous batch of white stuff.

6) Being French he called his white stuff, “truc blanc.”

7) If he had been Arabic, he would have named it, “e had been Arabic, he would have named it, “

.”

8) Just try saying that twenty times fast.

9) But Claudie wasn’t Arabic. He was French. And so history continued on the time line that we have come to know and love.

10) “Mama,” piped up Claudie, “I’m going to make us some truc blanc for lunch. Is that okay?” “Mais oui,” said Mama for she like all French mothers encouraged culinary expression in her young ones. “Just don’t make a mess.”

11) But Claudie did make a huge mess. Sticky white blobs adorned nearly every kitchen surface including ominously enough, the overhead fan.

13) “Make something less awful with that stuff,” she said. And with that maternal encouragement Claudie began to fingerpaint clouds.

14) On a white easel.

15) People laughed at his oeuvre d’art. “One cannot see the clouds.”

16) “This is my impression of clouds.” He kept saying that until people took to calling his art form “impressionism.”

17) “But one must have color to be considered art,” the keepers of French art would thunder.

18) “Baise cette connerie,” cried out a now older Claude. “I will add color to my paintings.” To his amazement, his artistic efforts suddenly became all the rage. So, this is how French impressionism came to be.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef