Lemon Sponge: or, Lemon fluff for hot weather

Halloween is approaching! Animatronic witches and zombies are appearing in various people's yards. A few people have already bedecked their houses with orange Christmas lights. However, no one is putting out ornamental porch pumpkins because it is still too hot out. Pumpkins may last half a year if you just put them in the back of a closet, but they wouldn't survive a week in the Texas sun. Therefore, we are making more oven-free delights! 

We previously made a variation of today's recipe from the Dormeyer cookbook (which, like my great-grandmother, came from Chicago. Is this a local dish?). Today's version has a few extra steps, and I was curious if it'd be better or if you can't taste the extra fuss. 

Lemon Sponge 1 (¼-oz) envelope unflavored gelatin ¼ cup cold water 1 cup boiling water ¾ cup sugar ¼ cup lemon juice (for me, it was 2 small lemons) 2 egg whites (save the yolks for the custard) ¼ cup whipping cream Custard (see below) Maraschino cherries for garnish Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water. Let stand for about 10 minutes. Then add the boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool in the refrigerator until almost completely set, stirring occasionally. (You can speed this up by putting the bowl of gelatin in a larger bowl of ice water and stirring for a few minutes.) With an electric mixer, beat the gelatin until frothy. Then, with fresh beaters (or just rinse the beaters real quick), beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Fold them into the gelatin. Lastly, whip and fold in the cream. Refrigerate overnight. Serve with custard on top, garnished with cherries. Custard: 2 egg yolks ½ cup milk 4 tsp sugar ½ tsp vanilla (or more if desired) Whisk together in the top of a double boiler, beating well. The sugar won't completely dissolve until it gets hot, so don't worry about the persistent grains at the bottom of the pot. Put over boiling water and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. After the sugar has dissolved, taste and see if you want to add more of it. Remove from heat, transfer to a small container, and cover with plastic wrap. Press the wrap onto the surface of the custard, making contact (this prevents a skin from forming). Let cool for a few minutes, then add the vanilla. Refrigerate. Note: If raw egg whites are a concern for you, use pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs. - Hannah O'Brien Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy) Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)- recipe credited to Hannah O'Brien

To make this recipe for a large number of people, use the following amounts: 4 (¼-oz) envelopes unflavored gelatin 6 egg whites (save the yolks for the custard) 1 cup whipping cream 1 cup boiling water 4 cups cold water 1 cup lemon juice 6 egg whites Maraschino cherries for garnish For the custard: 6 egg yolks 1½ cups milk ¼ cup sugar 1 tbsp vanilla

Apparently they really liked lemon sponge at my great-grandmother's house. She rewrote the ingredients in triple quantity under the heading "For large number to be served." And if they didn't like lemon sponge by the platterful, then it must have been one of her go-to recipes when she needed to come up with dessert for 20 with minimal effort. 

Based on various papers I've looked through, "H. O'Brien" was my great-grandmother's cousin. Come to think of it, I've never swapped a recipe with any of my cousins, so it's interesting to see my great-grandmother did at least once. 

Our lemon sponge begins with the foundation of so many things: gelatin!

I never really got involved with gelatin before I started going through this binder. My most ambitious  creation was canned peaches suspended in red Jello. Given my current progress, I may find myself attempting multiple layers if I don't have a sudden attack of sanity.

Just look at that crystalline loveliness in the mixing bowl!

After adding the lemon juice and boiling water, it looked like an innocent bowl of clear water and tasted like lemonade. A part of me I'm not quite comfortable with asked "why didn't I just use a box of lemon jello?" And indeed, given the path of American food history and the massive infusion of pre-canned and pre-packaged foods in the 1950s (all those canneries and factories didn't want to go out of business just because "our brave boys" had come home from fighting Hitler) this recipe may have later evolved to lemon Jello and Cool Whip.

We put the, um, fortified lemonade aside to chill while making the "soft boiled custard." Since we don't get any instructions, I cracked open my favorite cookbook of the moment, Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book. It's accidentally period-correct and location-appropriate, but I actually picked this book because I've liked every recipe I've made but one. To my surprise, Mrs. Mary Martensen does not provide a plain custard recipe, though I did find a custard sauce. I think a custard sauce is meant to be runnier than a custard?

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Anyway, Mrs. Martensen doesn't use a lot of sugar in this recipe. I first thought I should change that, but then I realized we're pouring this onto a sweet dessert. Besides, I could always stick a tasting spoon into the double boiler and see if our sauce needed a little help.

The custard takes us to the only part of the recipe that heated the kitchen (assuming you boiled your gelatin water in the microwave): standing over a steaming double boiler for a few minutes. I have to admit that I doubted Mrs. Mary Martensen as the custard came to a close. Sure, it passed the finger-swipe test on a spoon, but it still seemed very thin and runny.

Setting aside our custard, it was time to beat our gelatin until frothy. I've never tried to make gelatin pretend to be whipped cream, but I kept an open mind. It turned into a foam, though it melted in the process. (Remember the room-temperature air that ruined our prune whip?) I re-refrigerated our gelatin and then beat it again to hopefully firm it up and make sure the bubbles wouldn't slowly break.

Now, we fold white into white!

Lastly, we add a surprisingly small amount of whipped cream. I couldn't help thinking over and over that this recipe is a lot of white mixed into white. Or if you prefer to get a bit sociological, it's a big fluffy cloud of showing off that you own an eggbeater and an icebox.

As I was double-checking the recipe, I noticed a helpful hint on the other side of the page:

Since I always like to make recipes exactly as written, I refrigerated our first custard and made another. This involved cracking out another two egg yolks, but I figured I would find a use for the whites soon enough. Besides, extra custard has never made a day worse.

After everything had spent the night in the refrigerator later, it was time to serve our hopefully delicious lemon sponge. It turned out I didn't fold in the cream quite as well as I thought. But I think I could get away with calling it visible strata instead of ineptitude.

So, as far as topping our sponge, Mrs. Mary Martensen's custard slid right off. I didn't mind with this recipe because that meant we had a lovely moat of custard at the bottom of the bowl. But it's nice to know in advance that I shouldn't use this recipe for any attempt at aesthetic drizzle.

Yes, I bought cherries just to put on top of this.

The other sauce, made to my great-grandmother's cousin's specifications, did a little better.

I liked this recipe a lot more than I expected to. It's light and airy, which makes it great in the summertime. (And since summer keeps getting longer and longer...) The custard gave it just enough substance without turning it into something rich and heavy. And the whole creation had just the right amount of lemony flavor to make it refreshing.

Pineapple Bavarian Cream: or, Self-Supporting whipped Cream

When all else fails, just eat the whipped cream.

Pineapple Bavarian Cream 1 (¼-oz) envelope unflavored gelatin (or 1 tablespoon) ¼ cup cold water 1 (8-oz) can crushed pineapple, undrained ¼ cup sugar 1½ tsp lemon juice 1½ cups cream If you don't have an ice maker, put a large bowl or pot of water in the refrigerator ahead of time and chill until very cold. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water, let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the pineapple and sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You can do this in the microwave or on the stove.) Add the lemon juice to the pineapple. After the gelatin has soaked 5 minutes, microwave it until completely melted, about 15-20 seconds. Then add it to the pineapple. Whip the cream and set it aside. Transfer the pineapple mixture to a large bowl. Set it in a pot or large basin of ice water (or the water you refrigerated earlier). Stir until it begins to thicken. Then fold in the whipped cream. Pour into a gelatin mold (I don't know if you're supposed to use cooking spray but I did) and refrigerate overnight. Or if you don't have a gelatin mold, use whatever container is the right size. If it's not a shape you think would look good unmolded, you can easily serve this (as they say in many an old gelatin recipe) "attractively heaped in small bowls." Note: This is halved from the original recipe and still makes plenty. Handwritten notebook, probably 1930s-40s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

Our August electric bill came in a couple of weeks ago, and the air conditioning hit us as much as we expected. I don't want to imagine what the final price would have been if I hadn't avoided the oven. (I think I turned it on four times in the whole month.)

So, since the heat wave shows no sign of giving up, we are continuing our heatless recipes! (Or, mostly heatless. Sometimes you need to put a pot on the stove for a little bit.) This recipe comes from my great-grandmother's book. I've never made a Bavarian cream, pineapple or otherwise. I always thought they were a super-fussy and fiddly undertaking, which is why I didn't exactly rush to make this one. (Her intimidating cursive didn't make the recipe look any easier.) But today, I decided to make a Bavarian and find out what it is.

This recipe starts with unflavored gelatin, which I like to keep on hand anyway. Don't tell anyone with puristic opinions, but I often slip an envelope of it into my custard pies to make very sure they set enough to slice. 

Because I have learned at least a little bit about using gelatin, I popped this into the microwave after it had soaked for a while so it could melt. (I learned this from making the whiskey thing.) Because I looked away for about ten seconds, I cooked it too long and it came out steaming-hot. I've said this before, but hot gelatin smells like boiled rawhide. I can't believe the food industry successfully sold it as the foundation of ladylike desserts.  

Next, we get to our starring ingredient: canned pineapple. I've learned so many ways to use canned pineapple since I started using my great-grandmother's book. Before this, I only knew about pineapple upside-down cake and pineapple on pizza. (While we're briefly on the subject, I'm not particularly wild about the "traditional" "Hawaiian" pizza with pineapple and Canadian bacon. But I do like pineapple, pepperoni, and green bell peppers.)

For reasons only known to gelatin, this got sudsy as it thickened.

I was surprised at how quick this recipe was. For some reason, I thought a "Bavarian cream" was one of those recipes that involves far too much labor for far too little payoff. But after cooling off the pineapple until it was about as thick as a half-finished custard, we were nearly done.

Apparently they really liked pineapple Bavarian cream at my great-grandmother's house. I cut the recipe in half and it nearly filled the gelatin mold, which can contain up to a slightly heaping quart (about a liter for our metric friends) of magnificent salad. This is a lot of Bavarian cream.

I tried a spoonful before refrigerating. My hopes then dropped faster than the elevator descending from the top-floor observation deck at the Hancock Tower.^note Our magnificent Bavarian was nothing more than whipped cream with occasional interspersions of pineapple. Like, straight whipped cream. Since I had already made the thing, I refrigerated it anyway just to see if it would get any better.

To my surprise (and unlike the last time we used this thing), the mold let go of our gelatinized creation, which rose to a magnificent height. Keep in mind, this is half the recipe. Had I made it in the amounts my great-grandmother wrote down, we would have two of these.

My gelatin molding skills are not yet church-social ready.

I wasn't happy with my pineapple Bavarian cream. It is exactly what you put in the mold: whipped cream with just enough gelatin to keep it together. Aside from a small bit of canned pineapple, this is essentially the same as the secretly gelatin-fortified whipped cream that I put in the trifle last Easter. (The gelatin may unnerve you, but the whipped cream didn't deflate after a night in the fridge and three hours in the car.)

With our stabilized trifle in mind, I almost want to say that perhaps my great-grandmother meant we are supposed to put this in a dessert instead of making it be the dessert. However, she decisively ended the recipe with the words "mould and chill."

I almost want to say this dessert is perfect for the summer because it's light and airy. But it's also (almost) entirely made of heavy cream, which probably isn't appealing in hot weather regardless of how whipped or well-chilled it is. So while I was disappointed, this recipe mostly left me saying "I don't get it."

*Which, technically, my great-grandmother could have gone to see. They (barely) managed to finish the building during her lifetime, and it was only an el train ride away. ↪

Hump-Day Quickie: Potato Fudge-- or, You'd never believe it's microwaved!

Our heatless cooking continues!

Prince Edward Island Potato Fudge 300g chocolate chips ⅓ cup warm mashed potatoes (just the potatoes, no added milk/butter/etc) 2 tbsp melted butter 1 tsp vanilla ⅛ tsp salt Up to 4 cups powdered sugar (viz. icing sugar) Have a greased 8" pan ready. Melt the chocolate. You can use a double boiler, or melt it in a large bowl in the microwave- stopping and stirring every 20 seconds. Mix the mashed potatoes and butter. Then mix them into the chocolate, along with the vanilla and salt. Mix in about half of the powdered sugar. Gradually add more until the fudge is about the right consistency and sweetness. You may have to set down the spoon and mix with your hands. Press into the pan. Cut into squares, then chill until firm. -Canadian Potato Museum, Prince Edward Island

...all right, so strictly speaking a microwave isn't heatless. The food in there does in fact get hot. But a microwave doesn't produce enough heat for the air conditioning to notice. At any rate, today we are making potato fudge. 

Apparently our recipe comes from the Canadian Potato Museum on Prince Edward Island. Those of us in the "Land of the Free" may know Prince Edward Island (if we've heard of it at all) as the home of Anne of Green Gables, but apparently in Canada it's also known for potatoes. Which makes me deeply regret that I haven't gone there in any of my northerly travels.

Mid-Century Menu

Anyway, someone on the Mid-Century Menu group shared this with everyone. I was skeptical, but then they shared pictures of the fudge itself. 

Since this recipe is very easy to cut down to a quarter of its original amount, I decided to add something special to it: Star anise! As the kids apparently say these days, we're sleeping on star anise in fudge. I can only add it to very small fudge batches because most people complain, but I think everyone should try it. However, I didn't think our coffee grinder could successfully pulverize entire star anise pods, so I prised the seeds out of them. They look like egg-cases from some household pest, don't they?

Meanwhile in the microwave, our chocolate had not melted but turned into a hot clay. I actually know why this happened-- it's that spoonful of butter. All butter contains a small amount of water (or, if you want to sound cheffy, all butter contains a small amount of moisture content). If you add a tiny drop of water to melted chocolate, it seizes into hard clumps and no amount of heat will make it melt again. But if you add a lot of water instead of just an accidental smidge, your hot seized chocolate will immediately go runny again. (If only I knew this when I did that sachertorte!)

This brings us to the magical ingredient: potatoes! 

The spuds added enough water (or, in twenty-dollar terms, the spuds added enough moisture content) to unseize the chocolate and make it act melted again. Potatoes really can solve all our problems in life.

The last step was to add a lot of powdered sugar. I had to put aside the spoon and knead it like I was making meatloaf. At first we had a crumbly mess. I feared that I had wasted a lot of chocolate.

But after getting my hands in there and forcing everything to mix, we had, um, this.

At least it's holding itself together.

I know what we're all thinking, so let's watch the video.

I managed to press the fudge into our container, but I think quartering the recipe made this harder than it should have been. The fudge couldn't hold onto its small amount of retained heat long enough to shape it and make it look nice in the pan. But after we had gotten it as good as we ever would, I cut it into four very generous pieces. I don't like tiny rations of chocolate.

 

This wasn't the best fudge I ever made. But I think that's because I added all of the powdered sugar at once when the recipe says to add it "gradually." My single day of experience with this recipe tells me the word "gradually" in the recipe means to "stop according to taste" and not "mix in all of it." Since I realized that too late, my first-ever spud fudge was more or less like sliceable cake frosting.

However, I could tell this would be good if I didn't dump in an excess of sugar. And maybe I simply needed a lot of chocolate after paying for an entire car air conditioner's worth of parts-- even if I saved at least a thousand dollars by persuading some friends to, um, help install everything.

This time, I forestalled our seizing chocolate by melting it with nothing else. Doesn't this like a better start to fudge?

Next, I added the potato, butter, and vanilla to the melted chocolate together. This meant we added too much water (or, in order to preemptively one-up food pedants, we added too much moisture content) for the chocolate to seize. I know that our chocolate unseized and broke apart the first time, but it was nice to keep things just a bit easier. 

I also omitted about a third of the sugar, which I think made the fudge better. Really, I think you can leave out about half the sugar before you miss it.

A lot of "no-cook" recipes are sad imitations of their respective originals, but this was in fact fudge. It is a lot better than I thought it'd be. If I'm being honest, it's no Fantasy Fudge, but it's definitely good enough to give away. And I really love how easy it is to reduce to very small amounts. And of course, we didn't heat the kitchen at all!

Cranberry Mallobet: or, Homemade Cranberry Soft-Serve

The original recipe was amazing right up to and excluding the last sentence.

Cranberry Mallobet 1¼ cup cranberry juice ¼ cup orange juice (fresh-squeezed if possible) 1 tsp lemon juice 1 cup sugar (white or brown), divided into two ½-cup portions 1 egg white* 20 marshmallows, or 5 oz mini marshmallows Red food coloring, if desired Melt the marshmallows in the cranberry juice, either by cooking in a saucepan over medium heat or in the microwave. If using a microwave, cook long enough to bring to a vigorous boil and then give a good hard stirring. Continue boiling and stirring until the marshmallows are dissolved. (Honestly, just do this step on the stove- it's faster.) Remove from heat and add the orange and lemon juice. If the cranberry juice was unsweetened before you added the marshmallows (check the label), add ½ cup of sugar and stir until dissolved. Chill the mixture. Then beat the egg white until frothy. Gradually add the remaining half-cup sugar, beating constantly. Gently fold it in. If desired, add food coloring to make it a more definitive cranberry red. Freeze in an ice cream machine. Then transfer to the kitchen freezer and leave until firm. *If raw eggs are concern, use a pasteurized-in-the-shell egg. If you're wondering what you'd do with the rest of a carton of pasteurized eggs, you can cook them the same as ordinary eggs. You can't tell the difference. Mrs. Russell Ayres, 1817 Forster St, Harrisburg Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange, September 13, 1935; page 12

I wanted to make this as soon as I read the name. The word "Mallobet" sounds almost cloyingly whimsical, like the name of a cartoon character of indeterminate species that you would see on one of those children's shows where everybody frolics among the flowers and learns about telling the truth and sharing toys. 

Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange, 13 September 1935

Theoretically, the recipe is quite simple. You squeeze the juice out of cranberries, add some marshmallows to suds them up, add a whipped egg white to fluff it some more, and then put the whole mixture in the freezer before it has a chance to deflate. After a few hours, you should have a reasonable simulacrum of ice cream. 

I don't know why we're supposed to put baking powder in the water, but let the record show that I did.

In nearly no time at all, we were ready to shove our cranberries through a colander. The easiest way I found was to put a small plate on the mound of berries and shove it downward. After we had squeezed out all we could, the remaining cranberry paste was so tasty that I deeply regretted having no recipes lined up to use it.

Our juice tasted very diluted, like Kool-Aid after all the ice has melted. We also had a lot more of it than the 1¼ cups that Mrs. Ayres claims that we should. I poured the excess into a glass to taste it, and was underwhelmed. Nevertheless, I added precisely 20 marshmallows to what remained. These marshmallows had caused a minor scuffle in the kitchen when someone had the nerve to eat them.

"Don't eat those marshmallows!" I yelped. "They're counted!"

"What?" He stared at the bowl of marshmallows, trying to figure out why they had become a precious resource.

"How many did you eat?"

"Oh good grief...."

After replacing the marshmallows he ate (two of them, in case you wondered), we could proceed to turn our cranberries into a delicious ice cream. Or so I thought.

Things looked all right at first. The marshmallows turned into a thick layer of foam on top of the berries. But as they continued melting, the foam dissipated. Remember how our lemon-beer pie turned into a layer of suds on top of a murky fluid? We had that again, though this time it was a rather charming shade of pink instead of an ugly beige.

Looks like we might have accidentally landed on a new way to make our own Jello 1-2-3.

Our mallobet tasted like it could become really good ice cream if it acted like the recipe claimed. Most of the flavor came from the orange juice because Mom had sent me off from Thanksgiving with some really good oranges.  But I could still tell why Mrs. Ayres got the $2 basket of groceries and her name in the paper.

Had the mallobet-in-progress tasted underwhelming, I would have followed Mrs. Ayres's direction to "freeze in tray of automatic refrigerator without stirring." Then I would have thrown the ensuing pink ice brick into the sink and closed out the recipe with unsurprised disappointment. But this had potential. You could tell that it wanted to turn into something good.

So, I forced success upon our mallobet. Thinking of our earlier prune whip and the ambiguity of older freezers, I decided that perhaps you're supposed to refrigerate this without freezing it. Maybe the marshmallows add enough gelatin to turn it into a wobbly dessert. Refrigeration did nothing, so I decided to repair this mess with, naturally, more gelatin.

Our cranberry whip wasn't the mallobet Mrs. Ayres meant it to be, but it was still pretty decent. I wasn't excited or in a rush to repeat it, but I didn't mind having made it either.

However, I couldn't quite get the recipe out of my mind. In its earlier failed stages, it was was some of the best melted ice cream I've ever had. You could tell what it wanted to be. So with that in mind, I put the mallobet aside until the next time I was at my parents' house. They have an ice cream machine in the closet and an ice maker in the fridge. And really, what good is the ice maker if we don't completely empty it without asking everyone?

This time, I decided to spare myself the bother of juicing my own cranberry pulp. This is a new millennium, and we now have cranberry juice in bottles. Additionally, since it it is no longer winter (I made our first failed mallobet in early December), I let the stove stay cold and used the microwave instead. As I found out, marshmallows are surprisingly resilient in the microwave. For the first several minutes of cooking time (more than long enough to partially carbonize a standard-issue frozen dinner), they resolutely stayed like this.

If you see any lines through the marshmallows, that's where I tried to cut through them with a spoon. They glued themselves back together like sugary self-healing mats and remained frustratingly intact.

Eventually, the marshmallows broke into clumps, turning our bowl into a half-decent terrazzo sample.

After boiling the cranberry juice for a looooong time in the microwave, we still had a few specks of marshmallow that absolutely refused to give in. This might have been faster on the stovetop. I know we're trying to keep things low-heat, but you're looking at the result of twenty minutes of stopping and stirring.

Moving on with the recipe, we have previously learned that a whipped egg white can only take so much sugar before it loses its peaks. I knew this would happen, but did this anyway. We ended up with this sort of goop that floated over the berry juice. 

So now, we were ready to split off of Mrs. Ayres' directions and get out the ice cream machine! This is the same one I bought when I wanted to make water ice. I don't know whether to say it's surprisingly durable for still working after so many years or not. After all, it hasn't left its box since before the pandemic.

Or at least, the machine was durable. But after so many years of quietly gathering dust in the closet (I really should have closed the box), the barrel started leaking brine all over the counter. I always thought the motor would burn out first.

Behold the salt trail spurting out of the to the leak site.

As the sub-freezing brine uselessly dripped away, I got progressively angrier at this recipe and at fate. It felt like the universe was snatching my mallobet away from me. So, I went online to see if anyone was unloading an ice cream machine for cheap. I really wanted one of those fancy machines that has its own freezer so I wouldn't have to faff with ice and rock salt ever again. This turned up for $30.

I was super excited to get this, becoming more so when I read the instruction (of course I read the manual) that the bowl "The freezer bowl must be completely frozen before you begin your recipe."

"Ah!" I thought. "Its built-in refrigerator needs six hours to warm up!" So, I plonked one of the bowls into place and turned the machine on. The bowl started spinning, but I saw no way it could possibly get cold. It was then that I realized: I didn't miraculously get a self-freezing ice cream machine for the cost of a pizza delivery. I got one of those ones where you have to make room for an entire bowl in your freezer. This meant that I would have to wait a long time before we could see if the cranberry ice cream was any good.

Furthermore, both of the freezer bowls were leaking some unidentifiable white substance from around their top seams. I didn't know if they were now too poisonous to use (even after a trip through suds), or even if they still had enough fluid in there to make enough internal ice. I chucked them in the freezer because I couldn't return this machine anyway.

And so, muttering a lot of words unfit for impressionable children, I threw some badly folded towels on top of the dribbly ice cream machine, hoping that what ice remained would at least keep it cold.

After waiting a long time and fielding a lot of reasonable yet annoying questions like "What's that on the counter?" and pointing to all the styrofoam packaging to ask "What are you going to do with that mess?" it was time to see if our mallobet was capable of turning into ice cream. 

I was a bit nervous when I got it out of the machine. It seemed too runny to be a real ice cream-- like it would just turn into rock-hard ice in the freezer. But I think it was as frozen as the machine would ever get it. 

I shouldn't have worried. After a few hours in the freezer, our mallobet was perfect. And it tasted incredible. Using bottled cranberry juice added so much more flavor than our own homemade watery runoff. And it was fantastically smooth. I wonder if the gelatin in the marshmallows prevented little ice crystals from forming as it froze.

This stayed soft in the freezer (probably because the marshmallows added enough sugar to substantially lower the freezing point) and tasted amazing. It was well worth the second ice cream machine. Even though it has no dairy, it was wonderfully creamy. I'm very glad I didn't throw out the recipe after the first time it didn't work.

As a postscript, I mildly unnerved my sister when I said "It's dairy-free but it's not kosher!"