Fluffy and fabulous! 17 ways with marshmallows – from cheesecake to salad to an espresso martini

The connection between marsh mallow the herbaceous perennial, also known as althaea officinalis, and marshmallow the puffy cylindrical sweet, is historic. In the 19th century, the sap of the plant was still a key ingredient of its confectionary namesake, along with sugar and egg whites. But that connection has long been severed: the modern industrial marshmallow is derived from a mixture of sugar, water and gelatine. Its main ingredient is air. But there’s a lot you can do with the humble marshmallow – here are 17 examples. By all accounts, a homemade marshmallow is infinitely preferable to the store-bought version, although it’s also a necessary compromise – you can’t hope to replicate the exact texture of the machine-made product. Most recipes call for egg whites and gelatine, although Felicity Cloake’s perfect marshmallows dispense with the egg. Fancy variations on this basic theme include Tamal Ray’s lime marshmallows and Jamie Oliver ’s chocolate ale marshmallows. Helen Goh’s redcurrant and marshmallow wreaths are a festive combination of homemade marshmallow, lime biscuits, redcurrant jelly and desiccated coconut. For the most part, marshmallow recipes – ie where marshmallow is an ingredient, rather than the desired result – call for the shop-bought kind. You could probably substitute your own homemade efforts, but that would be missing the point twice over. You don’t necessarily want your delicate, fussed-over creations to become mere ingredients, and anyway, there is something about a cheap industrial marshmallow – a certain quality, or lack thereof – that’s important here. Mary Berry’s toffee marshmallow squares are a slightly elevated take on the classic Rice Krispies recipe, which was always on the side of the cereal box, and probably counts as the first thing I ever learned to cook. Tom Kerridge’s popcorn bars provide a similar mix of sticky and crunchy. These chocolate marshmallow wheels, which sandwich layers of commercial marshmallow “fluff” (spread) and jam between two chocolate covered biscuits (akin to the classic Wagon Wheel biscuit), have a particularly decadent appeal. The similar American s’more is a standard summer barbecue assembly of toasted marshmallow, chocolate and Graham biscuit (a plain digestive is a good substitute), squashed together on site. But even if your barbecue has been stowed for the winter, you can still make Benjamin Ebuehi’s ginger biscuit s’mores with a blow torch or under the grill. Liam Charles’s recipe for mini-s’more scones is another take on the classic. Thanksgiving is upon us, and ambrosia salad offers up a sort of dividing line in American holiday dining. It’s either an annual fixture on your Thanksgiving table, or something you have never seen or tasted, though you are probably aware that some people – many people, in fact – routinely serve a salad with marshmallows in it not as a pudding, but as part of the main meal. I was raised in the latter camp, and I am as perplexed by the recipe as anyone in the UK. Steel yourself: alongside the marshmallows, ambrosia salad normally contains tinned mandarin oranges, maraschino cherries, diced tinned pineapple, grapes, shredded coconut and possibly some nuts. The white gloop that holds it together is most often sweetened whipped cream or a proprietary non-dairy whipped topping (Cool Whip, if you’ve never had the pleasure), but other recipes use sour cream, mayonnaise, evaporated milk or some unholy combination of the above. This one, as an example, uses a mixture of whipped and sour cream, which sounds oddly palatable. This one, from the Food Wine Sunshine blog, uses cottage cheese and orange jelly, which sounds less like something to be thankful for. And, yes, you are meant to put this on your plate next to the turkey and gravy. The other divisive Thanksgiving dish is mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. Here’s a recipe from Nigella Lawson that’s grimly authentic but still somehow enticing. The list of savoury dishes with marshmallow in them is mercifully brief, but here’s one more: courgette soup with parmesan and burnt chilli marshmallow. We’re back to homemade marshmallows, although these are spiked with chilli flakes and scorched to blackness before they become soup topping. Sometimes the consistency of a melted and then cooled marshmallow makes it a key textural element in, say, a version of strawberry mousse, or in Richard Bainbridge’s marshmallow cheesecake. This coffee ice-cream fudge cake requires both marshmallows and marshmallow fluff, along with corn syrup, sugar and ice-cream. My teeth ache just reading the recipe, but in a good way. Finally, a marshmallow cocktail, and not one that just uses a few mini-marshmallows on a skewer as a garnish. The toasted marshmallow espresso martini calls for a burnt marshmallow syrup and, if you can find it, a marshmallow-flavoured vodka. If you can’t find it, you are frankly probably better off.