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…
Sorry if this is a repeat post. My browser blipped or something! Just wondering where you found the nutritional information for the bean liquid? I’ve been following a facebook page all about using it “Vegan Meringue- Hits and Misses”. But I cannot find the nutritional info for just the liquid! I even called a few companies that sell garbanzo beans and they couldn’t tell me. I have to track all my fats/carbs/protein grams. Thanks for posting this! Hoping I can use it as a lower protein alternative to egg whites!
Fluff with chickpeas???? Wowza, will def try!
My jaw dropped when I saw the recipe! Thanx so much for making it with liquid sweetener:). I wondering if you can use black bean can liquid. Cuz I’m thinking to make black bean brownies and top it with the marshmallow stuff. Btw, the black bean brownies are the best gf cake recipe I’ve ever made. Thnx sooooo much!
If you try it, be sure to report back! I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, but I’ve not tried.
Can I just use a blender like a Ninja or Magic Bullet to whip it all up? Seems like it would take half the time.
I haven’t tried this recipe (yet! it’s on tap for the weekend!) but I use my Cuisinart food processor to whip up egg whites for meringues and things and it works perfectly. Just make sure everything is extra-clean without a trace of fat or anything on the equipment, or you really will be beating for forever.
I tried doing it in the blender, but the mixture got too hot. So I put the mixture in the fridge to completely cool, and it worked with the hand held beaters.
I’m not vegan but never make meringues because egg whites alone rob your system of biotin. Considering that I was planning on making roasted chickpeas this weekend, I’ll definitely be trying some variation of this.
Wow, I read a lot of vegan food blogs and I have never heard of this! I never buy canned beans because making them from dried is so much cheaper. It might be worth making an exception for lemon meringue pie, but I too am interested in whether this might work with the cooking liquid from homemade. I imagine it could vary widely based on how much water you use for the amount of beans? I hope lots of people try it and report back!
I have always heard you should rinse canned beans really well because the liquid on them can cause painful gas. Is that just a wives tale? If not, this recipe could be painful. 🙁 maybe that is just black beans and the white ones are different?
I have heard that you need to cook raw beans fully because of the gas issue, but I hadn’t heard you need to rinse canned beans so unfortunately I can’t answer this question. It hasn’t seemed to be a problem for anyone I know who has tried it.
I surfed around the internet to see what I could find about it. Some say that the bean water contains a particular sugar, oligosaccharide, that the human body can not break down and thus causes gas. Others say the bean water is full of sodium or preservatives. Still others say that bean water is perfectly healthy for you. I guess it can’t be as bad for you as all the artificial stuff you find in most things these days. Certainly worth trying your recipe when the ingredients are something we typically throw away; who doesn’t love free?! Thanks for all of your great recipes and hard work!
Thanks for reporting back! In any case, to avoid the preservative issue, I would definitely recommend organic beans without preservatives (such as Eden).
I am a Registered Dietitian. I have never tried bean liqiid either because as a student we learned that bean juice contains Stachyose and Raffinose, Oligosaccarhides/sugars that cause cramping and bad gas. If no one else has this issue though, i would love to try this recipe!
I thought this was just the soaking juice that caused cause, which you drain before cooking dried beans. I used the bean liquid in my hummus and it doesn’t bother me. I have a lot of digestive issues, but related to other foods: dairy, soy, wheat, …
Awesome idea! Mine turned out more like whipped cream, so I made strawberry parfaits. I took a photo but can’t figure out how to post.
World rocked 🙂 I would not have guessed chickpea water was so useful! Here, I have been just literally throwing it away!!
mind=blown
Nice work. Variations on this recipe and other low glycemic fluffs ( as well as answers to all the questions your commenters are asking ) are available in the original discussion group. Please consider adding a link to the group in your post, so that everyone knows where to go to contribute and join in on the fun: http://www.facebook.com/groups/VeganMeringue/. It’s only through our open sharing spirit that these recipes are reaching as wide an audience as we have now, and attribution is key to making that happen. Read more at http://aquafaba.com/community.html and come share!
Wow, that facebook page is fantastic! Thank you for sharing! I would be happy to share the link to answer the commenters, but do you have a specific post you can link me to that answers their question about homemade beans (or the other questions they have)? I like being as specific as possible when replying to readers to avoid confusion on their end. Or, please feel free to reply to them with links any time you have one! I know some bloggers don’t appreciate when commenters leave links, but my policy is the opposite. There are many times I don’t have the answer to a commenter’s question, and I’m always grateful when someone chimes in who does!
They are working on a q&a but right now there is a post at the top of the page with links to the main recipes. It’s an amazing group! I recommend everybody to join it. Most questions are answered and no, they haven’t figured out how to make angel food cake yet.
It wouldn’t let me comment on the facebook post, but I did want to respond. I’m still shocked such a facebook post was published in the first place and that people on the same side of the vegan cause as me automatically assumed my intent in not referencing a group I didn’t know existed was malicious. I’ve always tried to give proper credit when an idea is not mine and had made a point in my original post to stress I was definitely not the creator of this brilliant chickpea idea, mentioning where I’d heard it and where I’d been told it had originally come from. When you left a respectful comment on my site, I was very happy to edit my post and include a link to this group, and I replied right away by saying I’d gladly change my post to include it.
Then I clicked on your link before editing my words and was shocked to see a passive-aggressive post about my website right at the top of the page—liked by many people I’d respected for years (and apparently also liked by the person who created the vegan meringue facebook group)—claiming I was not giving credit where credit was due… to a forum I had no idea was the original source. Instead of respectful comments like yours, I started to receive comments on my own site laced with profanity and hatred. If this is the kind of thing the Vegan Meringue group and its members stand for, I don’t feel comfortable having a part or sharing it with my readers. The chickpea water is a fantastic idea, but I don’t want to unknowingly cause any more drama or negativity, especially among the very people working towards the same goal as me. Seeing as meringues and meringue pie have already been done by others, I promise not to post such recipes in the future on my blog. But please know that my original intent was never to hurt anyone or take credit.
Curiosity made me go searching for the post, and I have to agree it was a thinly veiled jab at this blog post, and also kind of ridiculous. Katie clearly listed her inspiration for this recipe, and even if she didn’t, does everyone who makes chocolate chip cookies have to link to Nestle or whoever it was that first discovered you can bake chocolate chips in a cookie and they won’t melt? I saw a lot of recipes on that facebook group that didn’t reference the person who first discovered pavlova meringue, brownies, etc. I’m also unclear how they are expecting everyone to magically know about their group and faulting people who don’t, but that’s another subject entirely.
I have to agree with Jennifer. Ideas are not the same thing as recipes. Every time someone wants to make a cookie pie with chickpeas, they shouldn’t have to link back to Katie’s deep dish cookie recipe unless they used her actual recipe. Every time someone wants to make a molten lava cake, they shouldn’t have to link back to Jacques Torres if they use their own recipe. And on and on.
To clarify I don’t have a problem with Goose’s comment on this thread, just what some of the people in the facebook group wrote. I’m also not a vegan and appreciate honey being included here, as I don’t eat agave and would have just used regular marshmallow fluff with eggs if this option wasn’t presented to me.
This just makes me so sad. Vegans should NOT be attacking each other. I’m sorry you encountered this, and for what it’s worth I had no problem with the wording of your post nor did I think it came across as if you were taking credit for the idea. Personally, I do not really care where the idea came from and I think what vegans should be more concerned about is not who gets the glory but the fact that vegan meringue is now a possibility! That is a victory for ALL vegans!
I wish you could ask those commenters how many people they’ve turned vegan. I’m willing to bet good money more people have become vegan due to your influence than due to theirs. I am one of them. Found your blog as an omni, and now I’ve been vegan for over 2 years all thanks to you! You are a perfect example of one small person changing the world for the better.
This is the coolest thing I have come across in a long time!! There are so many possibilities this could be used for!
I assume that most of you readers have used chia seeds to replace eggs in your recipes.
Just look up chia seeds on Google and you will find tons of information!
Katie, I have a challenge for you! I wonder if this recipe/method could be adapted somehow for frosting. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a white or off-white frosting without refined sugar and without coconut. My kids don’t like coconut milk/cream/meat, and one doesn’t like chocolate (which would disguise the coconut sugar color), and haven’t heard of a way of making frosting from agave which is light in color (and I don’t want to use xylitol or stevia). I did see there is a powdered agave available but expensive and reviews say it’s not as sweet as sugar so you need to add something else. I hope you’ll take me up on this challenge! 🙂
Hi Jenn,
This is actually thick enough that it can be used as frosting as-is. I topped chocolate cupcakes with it the other day for s’mores cupcakes and it worked perfectly! I’d only advise frosting just before serving.
Good to know, thanks so much!
If you google recipes for stabilized whipped cream, you’ll see that people use unflavored gelatin to keep it from running and such. I’m pretty sure a vegan gelatin or agar could be used in this to do the same thing!
Great will give it a try, thanks!
I’m actually going to try this with a blended cauliflower to see if it has more the thick frosting consistency rather than the cool whip consistency. I’m very excited about all the ideas this recipe has put in my head. 🙂
Do they have to be canned. Would the liquid from crockpot garbanzos work? Or simply cooked garbanzos? What ingredient in the liquid causes the reaction to take place? A starch from the beans or some additive in the canning process? Just got me to wondering. Thanks!
I’ve only tried canned, but please be sure to reply back if you experiment!
Have a look here for some advice: https://m.facebook.com/groups/372343816286624?view=permalink&id=381094045411601¬if_t=group_comment_follow&ref=m_notif
Holy Toledo, Batman.
This is a bit gross but totally how I feel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Lnz64vXB8
I have been longing for a healthy Fluffernutter.
Katie … yeah.
Hi Katie!
How did you calculate the nutrition facts? I mean, as long as you’re using calorie free sweetener, wouldn’t the calorie content be close to none? I guess, what I’m really trying to say is — what is the garbanzo water all about? What does it contain… besides from water?
I calculated it with agave. I don’t know of any calorie-free liquid sweeteners, but if you know of one and wish to try, please feel free!
Hi Ladies,
I actually just came across such a product at a local independent health food store. They are usually the first in town to carry new products. They are still the only place (despite having Whole Foods here), that carries the protein-packed hemp-based greek yogurt by Living Harvest that I discovered there last month: Tempt Yogurt! Check it out if you haven’t!
Anyway, back to the low cal liquid sweetner. It’s Madhava AgaveFIVE and sweetened with agave, stevia, & monk fruit!
http://madhavasweeteners.com/product/agave-5/