Let me share some inside goss on our mallows. Which of our flavours do you think sells more than any other flavour?

It’s Raspberry and Champagne, of course.

Maybe no surprise as, hey, it sounds so glamorous, so delicious, so unique. It’s all of that and more. This gorgeous little mallow has got me places.

When I first started out I making marshmallows  I managed to blag a weekend market pitch on Portobello Road.

I would make them when I got home from my day job ( as a chocolatier) and sell them on a Saturday.

At first it was just a way of me making a bit of extra money but very quickly these marshmallows started getting lot of attention- Vogue Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, the BBC. Soon Harvey Nichols asked if they could start stocking them. And the flavour they wanted? Raspberry and Champagne DAAAHHLING!

Some flavours have come and gone but this one has always been my first love.

Ive always been seduced by flavour- it’s super important to me that the flavours I create are genuine. Not synthetic. That’s why we’ve always used fresh raspberry puree and rosé champagne.

The marshmallow recipe I created is perfect for carrying flavours because it doesn’t use egg white and is soufflé like in texture so you can taste the different layers and notes of the flavour develop as you eat them. That’s what makes the raspberry so fun…the little pop of champagne at the end. It enhances the raspberry in such a subtle way but you always KNOW it’s there.

But it’s not always been an easy ride.

I’m guessing you’ve bought raspberries from the supermarket before and, if so, you’ll know how few you get in those little punnets. I could not have picked a more expensive fruit to start whipping into a marshmallow. That and the fact there has been a Europe wide raspberry crisis. This non stop rain we seem to be having has meant crops of raspberries are waterlogged, supply is low, quality can be variable and prices have doubled, sometimes tripled.

Using fresh produce is not the best game to be in…if we used bottled flavourings then every batch would be the same. But..the shade of pink wouldn’t vary when the season changes, the sweetness levels wouldn’t need to be tasted as they bubbled in the pan. And if we lost those things they wouldn’t be the best. And we’re not here for anything that isn’t the best.

Champagne picked a fight.

This story still makes me giggle. In the months following the UK’s departure from the EU the French were, understandably, disgruntled. And for reasons that are still unclear I received an officail letter from the region of Champagne. The actual entire region. Asking me to stop saying I out champagne in marshmallows and, instead, say what it is. English sparking wine.

I wrote back explaining that as a committed francofile, champagne drinker and business owner, I will continue to use champagne, Merci beaucoup.

Champagne wrote me back. To inform me that putting champagne in a marshmallow was…a waste of champagne.

Which is, possibly, the most French thing ever said.

Thankfully, I think the French are over it now.

And it’s why my raspberry and champagne marshmallows, are still here, still my bestseller, forever and always a Marshmallowist ‘classique’