Day 5 Valentine Countdown-MMmmmmm Marshmallows!

Who doesn't love all the homemade marshmallows you are seeing everywhere?!!


I decided to use this recipe.
Marshmallows Recipe
3 envelopes of Knox gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cups corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Powdered sugar for dredging

In the bowl of an electric mixer (preferably a stand mixer), sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold water. Soak for 10 minutes. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute. Pour boiling syrup into gelatin and mix at high speed. Add the salt and beat for 12 minutes. Add vanilla and incorporate into mixture. Brush your spatula with oil and scrape the mixture onto a sheet pan lined with foil brushed with oil and spread evenly. Cover with another piece of foil brushed with oil.

Let mixture sit for a few hours. Remove from pan, dredge the marshmallow slab with confectioners’ sugar and cut into equal pieces with a chef’s knife. Dredge each piece of marshmallow in powdered sugar or dip in chocolate.



I wasn't sure how well these would fluff up into marshmallows, without egg whites. But fluff up it did, with no problem!! I will indeed use this recipe again. After perusing a few marshmallow recipes (or rather, perusing the ones that Anjeanette sent me) I decided I did not want to dust my marshmallows in cornstarch. So, I dumped some red sprinkles into my Magic Bullet (I soo heart my Bullet!!). It chopped it into a perfect pink powder.

I also wanted a bit more zip to my marshmallows and so I ground up red hot candies, as well. I mixed the 2 powders together to give me more powder to play with. If I didn't want the powder colored, I would have used powdered sugar instead. After all, what tops sugar better than more sugar!?
See, it makes quite a nice powder!
While my gelatin was soaking in the cold water in my mixer, I boiled the sugar, corn syrup, and more water. At this point I added a ton of red food coloring. I let that boil hard, for at least a minute.
Next, I added the syrup mixture to the gelatin water. This was the point where I wasn't sure how much this would "fluff" up. It certainly did fluff right up. You add the salt and the vanilla (or any other flavoring you want) at this point, as well, and then just keep mixing for 12 minutes. I loved the color of my marshmallow mixture.
I had a pan all ready to go , to pour the marshmallow into. I just used wax paper as a liner in my pan. I sprayed the wax paper with pam, and then "floured" it with my red hot candy powder. I poured the mixture straight into this and evened it out. Then, I dusted the whole top with my red hot candy powder (this is a step I used many times). I let it set for about an hour and then dove into it. I had a prepowdered plate that I turned the whole dish over onto. The wax paper pulled right off with no problems.
I used heart cookie cutters to cut heart shaped marshmallows out with. This had to be powdered in between each heart. When a shape was out then I powdered all the "raw" sides. This is super sticky stuff but was totally handle-able if you kept all sticky edges powdered! All the scraps from around the shapes I still powdered and put in a bowl for the kids to munch on. They loved it!
This was one of my larger hearts. The dish I poured into was smaller than a cake pan, so my marshmallows were about 2 inches thick! To make my smaller hearts I had to cut that in half (to 1 inch thick) before I cut the small hearts out.

Hearts and arrows are always cute! I used skewers for the bigger one and toothpicks for the smaller one. I liked it both ways.


I also made plain square shaped marshmallows. I will be using these in a few fun things over the next couple of days (if the kids don't devour them before!).


Rebecca


~~~

Mom came over today and saved me from being alone with now two sick boys. sigh. She rode with me to Phoenix Children's Hospital to pick up some more samples for my two year old. What would I do without my Mom? Rebecca and I always think that our creativity comes from our paternal Grandma. But our traditions come from our Mom.

On the drive today, Mom reminded me that we used to make marshmallows with her when we were very small and lived in Utah. She would take a cake pan and fill it with tons of flour. She would take an egg and make egg impressions in the flour. It would create an indent of about half an egg. Then she would mix up the marshmallow and would spoon it into each indent. When they were cooled off, she dipped them in chocolate and piped some flowers and our individual names on them. I totally remember eating them;)

Sometimes I just have to talk to my mom and she reminds me of all kinds of things we did. She really can do anything. Today's drive was about 40 minutes each way. It was a great way to keep my mind off what is going on;)

I asked her if there was anything she couldn't do. She said she didn't get into sewing as much. So I can trace my love for sewing to my grandma. But everything else comes from Mom, I guess;)

I also went with a marshmallow recipe that did not include egg whites. I too wasn't sure how the marshmallows would fluff up. This recipe was totally easy. I did struggle a little with cutting them up. Rebecca had made hers first. She suggested that I take a regular old spatula. (The kind you would use to take out your cookies with.) Dip it into powdered sugar and stick it straight down into the marshmallow. It took me a second to understand what she meant. But after trying to run a knife through it and failing miserably...I understood. After every time you slice with the spatula, you need to dip it in the powder again. Worked like a charm. I covered mine with a few red sprinkles and dipped each piece in powdered sugar. They were creamy and yummy. But kind of lacked in flavor. Next time I would either use something besides my vanilla, or I would coat them in a regular sugar and not powdered sugar. I'm used to Peeps with that crunch. These were creamy and the chocolate actually made them even better. (I can't believe I just suggested using chocolate.) They would be to die for in some hot chocolate. (Again with the chocolate, what is wrong with me?) Heaven!!

Could you imagine these in s'mores? Or how about covered in crushed peppermint? Oh my! If you are so inspired to play along, please share your try with us at our flickr group We would love to see what you can do with Marshmallows.
~~Anjeanette

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