Brent Hickey, age 10, of Chandler, Ariz., for his question:
HOW ARE MARSHMALLOWS MADE?
Some of Andy's favorite cookies are made with marshmallows. You can make them if you take a quarter pound stick of margarine and melt it in a 3 quart saucepan. Then you add 40 marshmallows, mixing until they are melted and well blended. Next you take the pan off the heat and stir in five cups of crisp rice cereal just as it comes from the box. Press this into a greased 13x9 inch pan and let it cool. Presto! You have crispy marshmallow cookies that taste so good.
Marshmallows, that are good in so many different dishes, are now made by blending corn syrup, sugar, dextrose, starch, water and just the right amounts of natural and artificial flavoring. With the proper cooking know how, out comes the puffy confectionary treat that is dusted with powdered sugar. It's a favorite with many adults and children.
Before gelatin and syrup became the main ingredients, marshmallows used to be made from the thick roots of the marshmallow bush. The plant, which thrives in salt marshes, has velvety leaves and pink flowers.
In the mallow family of plants, you will be interested to know, is the swamp rose mallow that grows four to seven feet tall and has tremendous pink flowers up to seven inches wide, the garden hollyhock, the rose of Sharon, the okra which is used a great deal in Creole cooking, and also the cotton plant. That's a wide variety of relatives, you will have to admit.
The same plant that first brought the popular marshmallow confection is from a species with the fancy name of Althaea officinalis. Its mucilaginous roots also yield a drug which is used to soothe inflamed tissues. Each fall the roots are collected from the erect perennial herbs that grow in the salt marshes. They are then scraped and dried as a way of extracting the drug.
The true marshmallow plant is a native of Europe. It was brought to the New World many years ago and has prospered here. The hollyhock member of the family is a Chinese perennial that has been introduced into just about every other country of the world.
How do you like marshmallows? Toasted on a stick over hot coals? Some people use the miniature kind in fruit salads. Lots of people pop one or two of the big ones into a cup of hot chocolate. And there are, of course, dozens of recipes for using the marshmallow in all sorts of dishes from candied sweet potatoes to cakes.
Along with nuts, marshmallows form the secret ingredient that makes rocky road ice cream so good. the 8 year old students of Mrs. Kathie Brown's third grade class