There’s a sweet tooth gene that runs in my family, and the farthest I can trace it with any first-hand knowledge is my grandma — my mother’s mother, born and raised in the Bronx by immigrant parents, first-generation American. Incredibly smart, she was stunning in her youth, reserved, kind, funny, and sophisticated until the end, and always had a candy jar full of chocolates on the coffee table and a drawer full of marshmallows in the kitchen. And in the winter, Mallomars. Always Mallomars. She pretty much had it all figured out. Now, I’m not one to go out and buy a bag of marshmallows on a whim, but when I do, for s’mores or hot chocolate, that poor bag is in for a ravaging. And Mallomars? Forget it. I’m on the hunt for those always, and here in Astoria, for some strange reason, I can never seem to find them. Solution: homemade vanilla bean marshmallows with dark chocolate and sea salt. The hunger in my genes must be sated.
