Discussions on eGullet, where I gathered the strawberry marshmallow recipe from, have suggested that the fat content in chocolate marshmallows causes a decrease in their resulting whipped volume.

My recent experimentation with black sesame paste marshmallows gave me the idea to add the chocolate at the end of mixing to minimize disruption of the marshmallow’s volume during whipping.

Here are the results of making two variations of chocolate marshmallows .



Pictured on the left is a basic vanilla marshmallow recipe.

The middle is the basic vanilla marshmallow recipe with the dissolved cocoa added after whipping; swirled in.

The right hand marshmallow is the chocolate variation suggested in the strawberry marshmallow recipe, which takes away 2/3 of the water used to bloom the gelatin and uses it to dissolve an equal amount of cocoa powder (by volume) which is all then added to the gelatin in the mixing bowl before the heated sugar syrup is added. Essentially, the cocoa added before the whipping.

The decrease in marshmallow volume is quite apparent when dissolved cocoa is added at the beginning of the whipping step.

The cocoa flavor of the swirled marshmallow is more acute though both chocolate marshmallows contain the same amount of cocoa.