This is in response to the technical problem experienced by Footprints when inventing his oh so deliciously decadent marshmallows with mint pesto. How do you hollow out a marshmallow? He wondered.

Well. With the right equipment and a bit of inventiveness, you don't have to! Aha!

See mallows are porous little things, with a bit of space on the inside anyway - this is the big, fluffy, puffy kind, not the hard little wannabes they tell us we can put in hot chocolate. So, if you have a cake decorating syringe at home, simply fill it up with whatever you want to stuff your mallows with (mint pesto, chocolate sauce, butterscotch sauce, dulce de leche etc.), attach the funnel which is narrow and a little bent at one end - this is designed expressly for this purpose - pierce your mallow on one side and give a squirt. There. All done.

But what if you don't have any fancy shmancy kitchen equipment around? Never fear! Take each marshmallow and, with a small sharp knife, make a tiny X shaped incision on one side. Insert the tip of the knife into this opening till you're about halfway through the mallow and give it a bit of a turn - this will free up some space. Now, take a piece of baking parchment, fold in half and roll into a tube with a point open but narrow enough to fit into the opening in the marshmallow. Spoon some of your filling into this tube, hold it straight with its tip just inside the mallow, and give a small squirt. Marshmallows are quite small, so be gentle or you'll end up with mint pesto all over your hands. Incidentally, if you don't even have baking parchment around, you can in theory use a sheet of plain white paper - but this is not so hygenic and also the unwaxed paper will tend to disintegrate. Give it a try if you're desperate, though, and let me know how it worked.

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