Sunday, January 3, 2010

Recipe Review: Marshmallows

I've been aware of what I'll call gourmet marshmallows for at least a couple of years. Catalogs like Crate & Barrel and the Pottery Barn have been selling them for a while, but I've never yet had one.

More recently I've seen a number of blog posts that reference home-made marshmallow, and I've finally taken the plunge. I admit that I didn't compare a bunch of recipes; I went with this one from Not Without Salt and am so far cautiously optimistic. It's very easy: let some gelatin get wet while cooking water, sugar, corn syrup, and a bit of salt in a pan. The tricky bit was getting the mixture up to 240 degrees - my stovetop seemed happy to sit at 215 for a LONG time. I finally mostly-covered the boiling liquid to keep more heat in, and that seemed to help. I was terrified it would boil over and make a horrific mess, but it didn't.


 Once I finally got the stovetop mixture to 240, I added it to the gelatin and started whipping it madly. Boy do I continue to love my mixer. The combined ingredients went from a cloudy, hot liquid:



To a gooey white mass almost instantly:



Now I have to let them sit for a few more hours (or overnight! ha! as if I could wait that long) before I can try them. I can confirm that I licked the bowl after turning out the marshmallows. I feel a bit jittery and have a small headache, so they must be good!


I'll add a note later with the report. Stay tuned, true believers! 

Final note: next time, try adding peppermint extract! 

1 comment:

  1. These look great! I've long wanted to try my hand at homemade mashmallows. I eagerly await your report!

    ReplyDelete