After I made my last post about Fluffy Dr Pepper, I discovered through the infallible tutelage of Chrissy Teigen that I had used the wrong marshmallow product. My grocery store here in the Seattle area only carried a Jet-Puffed product called “Marshmallow Creme”. What I needed to use (allegedly) is something called “Marshmallow Fluff” which is native to the New England area. This is what’s used in fluffernutter sandwiches, and it’s what Mrs. Teigen recommends for a Fluffy Dr Pepper. Who could argue?

As a reminder, the recipe for a Fluffy Dr Pepper (or a Fluffy Coke) is very simple. You smear Marshmallow Fluff around the inside of a glass and you pour in your soda. Some people add ice. Chrissy added a pump of vanilla syrup. I kept it simple and just used fluff and soda.

For my latest experiment I tried versions using Marshmallow Fluff and Marshmallow Creme head to head. They have nearly identical ingredients, but the key difference I found is that Marshmallow Creme contains cream of tartar. This is an ingredient that I associate with Snickerdoodle cookies. It’s also known as potassium bitartrate and it’s a byproduct of the wine making process (the more you know…). As wine ferments it creates potassium bitartrate crystals on the inside of the barrels. I assumed it was similar to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) because they look alike, but cream of tartar is a powdery acid whereas baking soda is a salt that reacts with acids (and has an alkaline flavor). In my video about this I wrongly assumed that cream of tartar was alkaline. If anything, it was creating a more acidic flavor in the soda (like vinegar).

After trying both Marshmallow Creme and Marshmallow Fluff with Dr Pepper I concluded that they’re both terrible. I didn’t like how the Dr Pepper became instantly flat, and not enough of the marshmallow flavor came through to compensate for it. Chrissy added a pump of vanilla to hers which would definitely improve the situation, but I don’t think it’s better than a cold Dr Pepper over ice. The real hack here is to just add a pump of marshmallow flavored syrup and you’ll arrive at something interesting. I will readily admit that the Marshmallow Fluff is better…but not by much.

If you insist on trying this yourself, you can purchase Marshmallow Fluff on Amazon here. If you really want to try to wrong stuff, you can purchase that here as well.