Chocolate Malt Marshmallow Sandwiches
Curses, conspiracies, and conciliation.
This episode of Meals By Maeve truly has it all. And I don’t even mean the SUPERB cookie sandwiches at the end. 10/10 the best cookie I made all holiday season, and probably all year.
But hidden beneath that sweet façade lurks danger. On the last day of 2019 I made a Chocolate Malt Cake for a New Year’s party. It was divine. Then, 2020 happened. Impeachment. COVID. I could go on. As my favorite tweet from the era put it, “I’m advising that we cut the murder hornets subplot. We don’t need it to enhance the stakes, the running story line is already dramatic enough, and it’s just one absurdity too many.”
Fast forward to the last month of 2020 and I found myself making these Chocolate Malt Marshmallow Sandwiches. And it occurred to me - was chocolate malt cursed?
As a Bostonian, I take curses very seriously. For the first half of my life, the Curse of the Bambino was a Very Real Thing. For those of you who haven’t brushed up on your Red Sox history (and/or haven’t seen the excellent Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore 2005 film Fever Pitch), the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919 and subsequently didn’t win the World Series again until 2004. Cursed. This curse was so serious that it became a wayfinding mechanism. The “Reverse the Curse” graffiti on a Storrow Drive overpass was truly a landmark (RIP - former Governor Mitt Romney had it painted over after they won, which also really bothered my superstitions*). Post-2004 being a Red Sox fan got way easier, but something foundational was set inside me. I try not to jinx things and here I was making a chocolate malt dessert AGAIN. Risky.
Which brings us to the conspiracy in our story. While filming, I was aware of the delicate nature of this supposed chocolate malt curse (henceforth referred to as the “choc-malt curse”). But it was not until a few months later that I got wise to the conspiracy at hand. In the video I pan the camera to the stovetop and gloat that we are now quite literally “cooking with gas.” But DID YOU KNOW that gas is not, in fact, a superior heating fuel? The phrase was invented and promoted by marketing executives working for “big gas”. When gas came on the scene in the 1950s nuclear energy was all the rage and they needed to convince housewives that gas was superior. Fast forward 70 years and the gas we use for home heating and (*sobs*) cooking is one of the top contributors to carbon emissions. In the words of Taylor Swift on her highly underrated album Reputation, this is why we can’t have nice things.
At this point, only time will tell what misfortunes the choc-malt curse may bring. And some day soon I’m sure I’ll have to deal with the annoying-yet-necessary conversion of my house to a more eco-friendly heating system. But what we can hold on to - right here, right now - is conciliation with your mother. I accused her of being incapable of filming on a smartphone. She accused me of making an insincere apology. Which led to a second apology and a second accusation of yet another insincere apology. But before you worry that this mother-daughter relationship will be irrevocably lost to an endless cycle of slights and accusations, remember that blood runs thicker than water. And so does ganache. As we added the final flourish, our animosity fell away like extra chocolate dripping down the cookie sides. Sturdy like the marshmallow, balanced like the chocolate malt, we laughed and ate cookies and wondered how many we had to save for later…
Perhaps the choco-malt curse was a blessing after all.
*Later in life I adopted the Washington Nationals as my National League team and was revolted when they Let Teddy Win too early. Even though they eventually won the World Series in 2019, it still made me nervous.
Recipe from Yewande Komolafe, New York Times.