Sweets for VD

Valentine's Day (see?  I told you I was backed up!) gets a bad rap and for the right reasons.  I'm a logical, sane girl, but as Valentine's Day approached, I wanted something whimsical and silly and special for the day.  I'm dating someone this year, as opposed to the majority of my previous V-Days, so without trying to, I think Vals got put under the microscope a little bit this year.  I was taken out to drinks and dinner and got a few really lovely, sweet surprises.  It was a great day.  I thought a fair way to reciprocate, in addition to a little present here and there, would be to make dessert to cap the evening.

I have wanted to make marshmallows for a long 

time and finally the stars aligned when I found a recipe AND had all of those ingredients in my cupboard at my disposal.  Victory!  I always try to limit my buying for a recipe to about 30% of it, unless it's something I know just HAS to be made, and I don't usually have fresh tenderloin rolling around my fridge.  Ditto for sumac powder.  There are two basic recipes for marshmallows, one is the French way and it includes egg whites, sugar, etc.  The second way, the way I chose, includes gelatin and three-yes, three!- types of sweetener: sugar, honey, and corn syrup.  I also added a scraped vanilla bean and orange zest to complement the orange blossom honey I used.  Boiling, pouring, frothing and whipping ensues and the batter gets poured into a pan to set at room temperature overnight.  Mine turned out a little settled on the bottom, making that part more gummy-jiggly than marsh

mallowy.  I'm sure that resulted from me not whipping enough or properly.  The batter should expand to 3x it's size when the hot syrup is poured into the bowl and whipped.  Mine got to 2x, 2.4x, tops.

So marshmallows are taken care of, they just have to sit and look pretty. 

 I moved onto making two types of mousse- one peanut butter 'cuz my baby likes the PB, and the other a chocolate mousse.  I went through the steps of making custard, which I now think I could do with my eyes closed, and added the flavors, PB or Chocolate, and folded in whipped heavy cream.  I did not have any fun, fancy glasses to pour them into, so I settled on my mostly clear juice glasses and alternated layers of the mousses.  This resulted in quite large portions of mousse, but the bf is a big boy and I was sure this would be more appreciated than frowned upon.

The dessert ended up getting eaten the next day because after a night of drinks (we went to The Violet Hour, along with a slew of other people thinking they had an awesome idea for Vals Day) and a dinner of sushi and saki, the last thing we wanted was more food in our drunken, celebratory state.  As a warning, I wouldn't recommend that anyone devour 8oz. of extremely rich mousse and sugary marshmallows right after playing a game of basketball.  The bf did to ill affect.  I broke my juice glass serving into 3 nights of nibbling and savored every morsel.

Next year we agreed to order a pizza, drink beer, and watch a horror movie, and I think that'll be just fine.