Messy Goodness

I made something puffy and sweet and messy as all hell:

Marshmallows!

I can't have the store bought kind, because, intriguingly enough, they tend to include the Mystery Ingredient "natural flavors" (ingredients which, by law, food companies are not required to be specific about at all, and as such could be anything from corn based to soy based to bug parts; I'm not kidding on that last one, either), which makes no sense as there really only needs to be one kind of flavor in marshmallows: vanilla. The recipe I've linked to above is the one I used (half recipe, because I was warned that the full recipe makes for a blue million marshmallows) and it was really exceedingly simple. And messy. But one can't make art without getting a bit of paint on the hands, I suppose. Mmmmmm. I'm not entirely sure I did it right, but they're yummilicious, so I don't really care. The texture (which is the primary reason I doubt my candy making skillz) is more like...risen bread dough than the more dry, foamy manufactured mallows. Again, it doesn't matter, because I like the dough texture more than the foam. I mean, I really like it more than the foam. I bet they melt a treat, too. Otherwise, they taste just as vanilla-y as the generic sort, only without the chemical aftertaste. I've got some dark chocolate handy, I might have to see....[interval]
[/interval]
Mmmm. *burp* Tasty.

The only adjustment I made to the recipe was the change the dusting sugar from rice flour and powdered sugar to corn starch and powdered sugar, which is what the big bag companies use. I don't have rice flour at home, and I think it would only increase the sweet factor by a lot, so I didn't think it really necessary (and it wasn't, unless you're allergic to corn, in which case, good luck finding powdered sugar in stores. You can mill your own, but what a pain in the arse.) Here's the finished product, taking a powder before storage:



Aren't they pretty?

In other, non-sugar coated news, April starts ScriptFrenzy with the folks who run NaNoWriMo. I've already signed up. No, I don't learn my lessons, but then again I am an optimist--which is why I buy lottery tickets and sign up for writing contests I'm sure not to win. Actually, I think I can do this one. I've come to accept that I simply am not a long-form writer (preferring short stories to novels, which I find interesting since I don't read short stories at all, unless they're by M. R. James, and involve wordy Victorian ghosts) and the script format satisfies both the side of me that doesn't want to write long prose and the highly visual side of my writing. I hate long prose, because I get so very frustrated trying to set the scene without repeating myself in terms of adjectives. Scripts are so much simpler, because you set up the scene in a paragraph, and you don't have to worry about being flowery or literary in style. You just describe the scene. Way easier. I can do dialogue all the live-long day, too, so it's like being told to do your math homework, but it's all the parts you're good at and none of the sucky bits (except for formatting, but I downloaded the free formatting software they linked to. I'd also imagine that eventually, it would become second nature.)

It's only 100 pages. Of dialogue. With brief scene descriptions. Too good to be true. Particularly as I've got a plot that I've been toying with for over a year--a plot, by the way, that I all along have thought would make a great movie and a terrible short story, and have been trying to figure out how to convert it to prose. How convenient. I'm quite looking forward to April. *rubs hands together in Evil Genius glee*