Loganberry Mallomars

It's time for more marshmallow fun!  This time it's a Buffalo-themed marshmallow.  Don't worry, I'm not making you chicken wing flavored marshmallow, that might be a little weird.  Today I'm introducing you to Loganberry!

I have lived in several different places around the United States and have only ever seen Loganberry in Western New York.  Is it a unique item to the Buffalo region?  Do you have Loganberry soda in your town?  When I asked some of my coworkers, they asked if it was the stuff you can get at Ikea.  No, that's lingonberry. Surprisingly, this soda is bottled by PepsiCo.  Though since it's a WNY drink, I suppose I should call it "pop".

Loganberry soda is a completely impossible flavor to explain.  It's incredibly sweet and tastes like some sort of berry.  According to the smidge of internet research I did, a loganberry is an actual berry that was cultivated in California in the 1880's.  It's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry.  Californians hated it, but it found success as a soda at the Crystal Beach resort in Buffalo. I visited Crystal Beach as a child and have a photograph of my mom and I riding these umbrella gondolas over the beach.  Crystal Beach closed years ago, but loganberry lives on.

I wanted to celebrate my hometown and create a mallomar that incorporates one of it's most unique flavors. In one of my BuffaloFoods.com purchases, I bought a case of Loganberry soda (along with so many of my favorite hometown foods!). I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the soda, I just knew I wasn't going to be drinking it.  It's sooooo sweet!

To use the Loganberry soda, I poured six cans of the soda into a wide pan and boiled it, for about thirty minutes, until I had 2 cups of syrup.  I used the syrup as the flavor base for my marshmallows.  The finished marshmallows have that distinct Loganberry flavor that I wanted.  My only problem with these?  The Loganberry is made with high fructose corn syrup.  These marshmallows are a combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose.  But seriously, they are sugar bombs any way you make them.  I ate a whole bunch and didn't regret a single pink marshmallow!

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Almond Cookies

A Wilde Original

1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, beat together butter, powdered sugar and salt until smooth.  Add almond flour and vanilla and beat until combined.  Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the edges.  Add egg and combine.  Finally, add flour slowly until completely mixed.

Scrape batter out of the bowl and onto a large piece of plastic wrap.  Fold over plastic wrap and press dough out a little.  Using a rolling pin, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thickness.  Place dough sheet on a baking sheet and set in the fridge to chill for 1 hour.

Remove dough sheet from the fridge and peel back the top layer of plastic wrap. Stamp out 2-inch circles with a cookie or biscuit cutter.  Place dough circles on a baking sheet and chill for 30 minutes.  Collect dough scraps and re-roll between the plastic wrap.  Chill if necessary and continue stamping out 2-inch circles.

Preheat oven to 350 F and bake cookies for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet on a wire rack.  Remove from the baking sheet and allow cookies to cool completely before adding marshmallow.

Loganberry Marshmallows

A Wilde Original

6 cans loganberry soda

4 tablespoons powdered gelatin

1/2 cup water
3/4 cup corn syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar

Pour loganberry soda into a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat.  Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 cups.

Combine gelatin with 1 1/4 cups loganberry concentrate in the bowl of your stand mixer.  Let bloom while you prepare the marshmallow syrup.

Combine 3/4 cup loganberry concentrate, water, corn syrup and sugar in a 4-quart pot.  Clip on candy thermometer and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Do not stir the sugar solution while it boils.  Let the temperature rise to 250 ºF.  Remove from the heat.

Using the whip attachment, turn on the stand mixer to low speed.  Slowly stream in sugar syrup.  Once all of the syrup is added, increase the speed to medium-high and beat for 5 minutes.  Increase speed to high and whip for another 5 minutes.  The marshmallow batter should be fluffy, shiny and pink.  If your marshmallow batter has reached soft peak stage, transfer some of the batter to a piping bag (or ziploc bag).

To Assemble Mallomars

Almond cookie rounds
Loganberry marshmallow in a piping bag with a 1-cm round tip
Pink sanding sugar

Pipe blogs of marshmallow on top of your cookie rounds.  Let set for 15 minutes.  Pour sanding sugar into a bowl.  Dip marshmallow topped cookies into sanding sugar, coat all of the marshmallow so it's not sticky anymore!  Enjoy!