If you haven’t yet heard of Sweet & Sara vegan marshmallows, then you are either not vegan or foodie-oriented, or you live under a rock. Sorry to break it to those who might still be residing in the stone age, but these incredible confections have been the most exciting product to hit the marketplace since Soyatoo. Currently, they’re the only brand of marshmallow suitable for vegans, so they hardly need any extra buzz to pump up sales… Of course, for the purposes of scientific research, I felt it was my duty to see for myself what the hype was all about. It’s all for the benefit of vegan-kind, you see!
Two high and low points are immediately obvious about this product before we even leave the store: They cost one serious chunk of change in comparison to the standard factory-made marshmallow, and can be rather difficult to obtain locally if you aren’t lucky enough to live near a Whole Foods (unless you’re dead set on getting your mallow on, in which case they can be ordered online.) These points seem only like negatives, but trust me, if those barriers didn’t exists, I don’t know how I would convince myself to eat anything other than those sugary white pillows.
For this simple taste test, I only purchased the standard vanilla variety, but they also come in toasted coconut, and are even used to create some devilishly decadent pre-packaged s’mores, things that clearly need further investigation in the future. Biting into one plain, cold mallow, you might not expect much of a taste sensation, but these babies were in a whole different league than the standard: Soft, creamy, and just a tad chewy, it was like biting into a vanilla-scented cloud. While I had imagined that eating them straight would be tooth-achingly sweet, they actually proved to have a relatively balanced sugar content, which made them dangerously munchable. Admitedly, I can’t say that they truly struck me as being “fluffy”, but trust me, these aren’t just full of air like the traditional “jet-puffed” mallows; These are confections of substance!
Before I had the chance to mow through the package as is, I decided to roast one over an “open flame” (read: my gas stove) and see how it stacked up. Sure enough, the edges began to brown and bubble in no time, yielded a saccharine, gooey ecstacy, far better than any campfire treat that I could remember. Even cut into pieces and drowned in a cup of hot chocolate, they still held their own, refusing to melt before the bulk of the drink had been imbibed, and lent a delicious added sweetness to the whole beverage. Truly, I don’t think that you can go wrong with these, no matter how you choose to indulge with them.