This healthy vegan marshmallow fluff is going to rock your world…
Sweetener of choice
+
Water from a can of chickpeas
=
Homemade marshmallow fluff ????
Crazy, right?!
I can’t take credit for this brilliant “bean liquid egg whites” discovery.
The idea was sent to me in a facebook message earlier this year by a reader who discovered you could whip up the liquid from a can of garbanzo beans with sugar to form stiff peaks then pipe the mixture out and bake it into vegan meringues.
Since readers often write to tell me their own recipe ideas or experiments, I didn’t think too much about the message at first, especially since meringue and I have always been more of acquaintances than friends.
However, a few months later when I noticed some of my friends posting stunningly beautiful chickpea vegan meringues on instagram, suddenly I was intrigued.
Healthy Vegan Marshmallow Fluff
Then another reader left a comment on the blog asking if I’d tried bean meringue yet and mentioning that chickpea liquid–commonly referred to as aquafaba–has been used as an egg replacer since as early as in a 1968 cookbook (Ten Talents, by Rosalie and Frank J Hurd).
Wait… so it can be an egg replacer in other things besides meringue?!?
Like crepes?! Or baked goods??
So many ideas are swirling around in my head right now…
Christina’s message had mentioned whipping the liquid with fine sugar to form meringue, but I wanted to know if the aquafaba would also work with a liquid sweetener.
Only one way to find out! Seven minutes in, my pseudo meringue still looked like water, and I was almost ready to give up and throw the whole thing out.
But—magically at minute 9—it began to thicken… and thicken… and thicken even more!
Above – watch the video of how to make vegan marshmallow fluff
I had a baking sheet all ready to go for the meringues…
The only problem was that I just couldn’t seem to stop dipping my spoon into the airy cream.
It was just like marshmallow fluff!
Ideas for ways to use this healthy marshmallow fluff include:
Homemade s’mores, as frosting for cupcakes or my Vegan Chocolate Cake Recipe, in fluffernutter sandwiches… the possibilities go on and on!
Edit – There’s also now a version for Chocolate Marshmallow Fluff!
Vegan Marshmallow Fluff
Ingredients
- 1 can chickpeas or white beans (15oz)
- 1/3 cup sweetener of choice, such as agave, fine sugar, or xylitol for sugar-free
- optional pinch cream of tartar, for stabilization
Instructions
- Open the can of beans and drain just the watery part into a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl. (Save the actual beans for a different recipe. If you need inspiration, here are 50+ Healthy Uses For Canned Beans.) You should have about 1/2 cup chickpea liquid. Add all other ingredients, and beat with an electric mixer or in a stand mixer for 12-16 minutes. It will look thin for quite a while—and you’ll probably be cursing me—but don’t give up hope! Mine really began to thicken around minutes 10-11. Cover and refrigerate any leftovers. It separates overnight, but re-beating works perfectly. (I’ve not tried this recipe without beaters, but you are free to experiment. The sugar version can be baked into meringues; I haven’t tried baking the liquid-sweetener version.) I’ve tried this healthy marshmallow fluff with both regular and unsalted bean liquid and can’t taste a big difference, so use whatever you have on hand.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Vegan Recipes:
Vegan Breakfast Recipes – 50 Vegan Recipes
And now I’m going to go work on some homemade Mallomars…
I am planning to make a dairy free gluten free smores ice cream recipe and I am wondering if I can use this for the vegan marshmallows part? The recipe is from petiteallergytreats.com.
Be sure to report back if you experiment – it sounds like fun!
Not sure if it’s the same as egg whites in this way, but I’ve found that if you beat the whites to stiff peaks before adding the sugar, it takes maybe half the time. Hope this helps!
I had a chocolate attack today and did a general Google search for a healthy chocolate recipe. Luckily I found this site!
I have Lyme disease and am on a lot of meds. I always try to eat healthy but I have to eat even healthier now so that my liver doesn’t have to do a lot of work to process any junk food.
Within minutes of finding this site, I made the chocolate candy bar. I used the cocoa powder, melted coconut oil, and stevia. It is delicious and the only problem I am having is staying out of it!
I posted a link to this site in the general support forum of Lymenet which is discussion forums for people who have Lyme disease and related co-infections.
My next endeavor will be the shake n bake cauliflower.
Haha I love how you call it a “chocolate attack.” I get those too 🙂
Can this recipe be used to make cereal bars?
Has anyone tried baking these using honey???
Looks like an interesting alternative to the storebought stuff. I’ll have to give it a try one of these days and see if it would work in some recipes I have that call for marshmallow fluff. I recently made a healthy alfredo sauce using plain fat-free greek yogurt, fat-free cottage cheese, light cream, chicken broth, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs (to help stabilize the Greek yogurt so it wouldn’t curdle when heating) pureed in the blender, then heated over the stove, thickened with a little cornstarch dissolved in water and stirred in some salt, pepper, grlic powder, and grated parmesan cheese.
I might see if fat-free cottage chese pureed by itself would yield a product with the approximate consistency of double cream (a UK cream product that has so much butterfat in it that you have to spoon it out and can be piped without doing anything to it and can be whipped). If it does I might try to see if there’s a way to whip it and yield a passable whipped cream. Cotage cheese has a very very mild flavor, almost neutral flavor, so with enough sweetener (if successful in whipping it, I plan on sweetening it with truvia) it could make a good accompaniement on desserts suck as pumpkin pie 🙂
*suck = such (darn typos…..that typo nearly gave you a heart attack I bet LOL)
I tried making this once….It was horrible. Tasted like beans. My husband tried it, and he hated it too. No way we could use it as a sweet meringue, marshmallow fluff, or anything else. Bean flavor was way too strong to pretend we would ever get used to it.
These taste delicious but mine are more foamy/airy tasting than thicker mouthfeel I was expecting. Is this accurate or did I whip them too long?
Can I put the chickpea liquid in the vitamix on low instead of a mixer?
Probably won’t work, but please be sure to report back with results if you experiment!
I’m baking today for an event. I am not GF, but I like to include GF recipes for those who are. I was thinking of making Rice Krispie Treats using this fluff. Does anyone have an opinion on how that would work? TIA
Hi Katie, I hope you or someone else see’s this I would love the opinion and help. I made this recipe the other night, following it exactly. It looked just like your pictures. The only thing is, even with the sugar it still tasted like chickpeas. I also added more sugar (I think altogether 1 cup) but then the result tasted like chickpeas and sugar. I was wondering what yours tasted like? Should I not be suprised that it tastes like chickpeas since I’m using the liquid from them? I used Goya brand. Could you tell me which brand of chickpeas you used? Also, do you think using White beans instead will have a more neutral flavor? Thanks for the help.
Hey Katie!
Is it possible to make nougat with this recipe?
Thanks!
Sounds like a fun experiment! Be sure to report back if you try!
Thanks for sharing! Chickpeas are so versatile!
Can this be used to make rice crispy treats?
It sounds like a fun experiment. If you try it out, please be sure to report back for the rest of us!
Gorgeous!
It thickened in under three minutes, and it was quite nice but rather sickly; I think I put a bit too much sugar in because it tasted of chickpea at first, and it just kind of disintegrated in the oven. Not sure what I did wrong, but it was worth a try.