Chocolate marshmallow teacakes have been on my baking wishlist for a while now. I guess I have unconsciously been putting off making them because I thought it would be quite tricky, especially as I've never made marshmallow before. Me and my sister Helen love the Tunnocks teacakes you can buy in the supermarkets and they are something my mum often ate throughout her childhood so I guess it must run in the family!
To make these it was a three stage process. First I had to make a biscuit base that was not too sweet (because of the sweet marshmallow that would be on top) or too crunchy as I wanted the teacakes to be easy to bite into with a melt in the mouth texture. I came across a recipe for butter cut-out cookies in 'How to be a domestic goddess' by Nigella Lawson and decided to give these a go as she states that they hold their shape whilst baking but still have a 'melting buttery texture'. I'm happy to say that the cookies delivered in both of these categories- so far so good!
The next challenge was the marshmallow- something I was quite nervous about making as it involves cooking sugar with egg whites and using a sugar thermometer-eek! Turns out this was much simpler than I thought. I found a recipe from my Primrose Bakery cupcake book for marshmallow icing and decided to use this as I wanted a really soft, melt in the mouth consistency. Once the sugar mixture reached the right temperature, I transferred it straight into a piping bag and piped out marshmallow 'blobs' onto my biscuit bases.
The final step was to coat my marshmallows in a nice thick layer of chocolate. This was probably the trickiest part as trying to coat anything in chocolate is always awkward! In the end I just dropped the whole biscuit into the melted chocolate, moved it around until the whole thing was covered then removed it using two forks. I also made some white chocolate ones and even a 'Wagon Wheel' type biscuit using two larger biscuits sandwiched together with marshmallow and a blog of raspberry jam-yum!
Ok, so the teacakes don't look as perfect as the Tunnocks version but my goodness were they delicious and they certainly didn't last long between me and my sister!
