Homemade Marshmallows in Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream
My journey to rocky road ice cream began on a (yes another) rainy and dreary spring weekend when I was trying to come up with a new cookie to send to my marshmallow-loving sister for her birthday. I’d recently fell in love with making meringue (and wielding my kitchen torch), plus s’mores cookies seem to be having a moment. In the past I’ve made a copycat version of a local bakery’s s’mores cookie that has a whole graham cracker baked along the bottom of a chocolate chip cookie and topped with a marshmallow, but I wanted something different. I turned to my copy of 100 Cookies (#90 to be exact), to see what Sarah Kieffer would do. Turns out that she rolls balls of chocolate chip cookie dough in crushed graham crackers mixed with sugar and melted butter. Then she suggests turning to page 284 and making homemade marshmallows for the tops – and toasting them. Decision made. I was making these cookies. And left with too many marshmallows, I naturally had to make rocky road ice cream. It’s a bit of a “when you give a mouse a cookie” conundrum. Anyhow, all good paths lead to ice cream. While the jury may be out on the s’mores cookies, the marshmallows were definitely superior to mass-manufactured, and the case is closed when it comes to Salted Toasted Rocky Road Ice Cream.
Frosted Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies
If you lived in Eugene, Oregon or went to college in Eugene during the 80s and into the 90s, I’m betting you remember The Cookie Cottage in Valley River Center (VRC) shopping mall. And if you were not in the vicinity of Eugene during this time, you’ll wish you were once you see the cookies I’m about to tell you about. The Cookie Cottage featured a black pot-bellied stove and they sold several warm cookie varieties — but their specialty (or the most original) was a large chocolate cookie covered in chocolate frosting with a marshmallow filling. They were on the south end of the mall outside of Meier & Frank (where I happened to work during college). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information on the internet to confirm which years they were at the mall. I do know that when I was in college, and not naming names, we would make a special trip to Valley River for one of these cookies. Several of my sorority sisters (and my own three sisters) still talk about the renowned chocolate marshmallow cookies. In the words of one of my favorite sisters in the bond, they were “a fine product.”