Laura Curtis Retana and her husband, Paris, started an artisanal marshmallow company in 2013. More than a decade later, Malvi Marshmallows produces hundreds of thousands of soft, sweet, fluffy — and sticky — confections each year.
Each time she leaves her commercial kitchen, Retana carefully washes off the marshmallow fluff. “But when I get in my car,” she said, “as much as I’ve tried to wash off the marshmallow, there’s some part of me, maybe an elbow, that I’ve missed. I’m just always sticky.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Retana said she has loved marshmallows and s’mores since she was a girl. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, she worked as a research and development chef in New York City and developed her first marshmallow in a tangy, sweet hibiscus flavor that paid homage to her husband’s Mexican roots. She sandwiched the marshmallows with handmade, dark chocolate shortbread cookies — and her first bespoke s’more was born.
When the couple moved from New Jersey to help her husband’s twin sisters open a restaurant in Cumming, marshmallows still were very much on her mind. “We named the company ‘Malvi’ from ‘malavisco,’ Spanish for ‘marshmallow,’” she said. “The Spotted Trotter became our first account, and the Beehive was next. I was still working a full-time job, so I would make marshmallows in the evening in a shared kitchen.”
Anthropologie found Malvi on Instagram and placed the company’s first big order. “I was still hand-rolling the cookies and hand-cutting the marshmallows, but that order allowed us to get a loan for more equipment,” Retana said.
She was able to quit her day job and move the business into a commercial kitchen next door to Lake Burrito. And it was through Lake Burrito that she met the regional sales representative for Whole Foods Market, who helped put Malvi on the shelves in most of the chain’s Atlanta area stores.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Well, not actually on the shelves — Malvi’s products generally are on a table in the specialty food section — near the cheese, wine and beer— with fancy chocolates. The company offers four marshmallow flavors: passion fruit, honey vanilla, Fluffernutter and cotton candy, which is the most popular.
Retana is a little less hands-on with the marshmallow making now. Her days are spent dealing with accounting, ordering, printing out labels, answering questions that come in through the website and preparing for the holiday season, while her team makes the marshmallows.
“We make a hot cocoa mix and have a gift set that pairs the cocoa mix with our marshmallows,” she said. And Malvi goes on location in a trailer, offering hot chocolate and marshmallows. This year they’ll set up Nov. 24 to Jan. 6 at Avalon in Alpharetta.
Retana also is working on new flavors, including chocolate malt and a variation of her original hibiscus marshmallows. She also would like to add caramel to an espresso marshmallow and is eager to test a bananas Foster version. “I love looking at what fine-dining chefs are doing ... what people are exploring right now,” she said.
The challenge with developing marshmallows is to get the flavor to shine through, since so much air is whipped into them, Retana said. “Unless the ingredients are super concentrated and multi-layered, flavors get diluted out.”
She also likes to try different textures and accents, to provide a little saltiness, acidity and crunch.
Retana is grateful she has family in the food industry who pitch in, especially during the busy season from October to December. “My husband, sisters-in-law, in-laws, former team members and friends all jump in when we really need it,” she said. “And I am thankful that, after 10 years, I’m still able to play with marshmallow flavors and get sticky. For a former Girl Scout, it’s a dream come true!”
Malvi Marshmallows. 404-884-8179, malvimallow.com
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