Homemade Marshmallows!

I just love marshmallows! Everything about them is delicious, from their slightly crusty outside to their chewy, gooey middles. And roasting them is a lot of fun as well! Who doesn't have memories as a little kid just sitting around a fire with sticks that had marshmallows on top? I, for one, have lots of those! Even though these are homemade, they are delicious! They might even be better than store-bought! But I might just be bias :) I guess it's just because I like marshmallows, wherever they came from! If you like them as much as I do, enjoy reading and Please Vote for Me!

First off, collect the things you need.

Ingredients:

Gelatin

Water

Vanilla

A bit more water

Granulated sugar

Light corn syrup

Oil

Powdered Sugar

Cornstarch

Cocoa powder

Candy (optional)

Equipment:

Candy thermometer

Stand Mixer

Saucepan

Measuring cups

Baking Pan

Stand Mixer cover, or towel

Spatula

Cutting board

Knife

Bowls

Take your saucepan and set it over high heat with one cup of water in it. Then, add one and a half cups of granulated sugar, and one and a fourth cup light corn syrup over top. Do Not Stir! This might cause crystallization and for this recipe, it won't work:) Leave your syrup on high for a few minutes after it begins to boil, then insert your candy thermometer. While your waiting for it to come to the right temperature (250°F), do Step 3.

Take 3 tablespoons of your gelatin and measure it into the stand-up mixer bowl. Then, measure out one tablespoon of vanilla, and combine it with one cup of cold water. Mix the water/vanilla together, just to make sure they are evenly distributed. Then, turn on your mixer to low and slowly pour the water/vanilla into it. Keep mixing until it is about the texture of applesauce.

Once the gelatin is the right texture, take your sugar syrup (it should have reached 250 by now) and pour it in very slowly while the mixer is running around a medium speed. Once you have poured about half of it in, speed the mixer up a bit, and then slowly pour in the rest. It will begin to almost get frothy at the top at the beginning, but will soon begin to thicken. Turn your mixer as high as it will go and cover with a mixer cover or a towel to keep the marshmallow mixture from flying out. After endearing about two minutes of this, I unplugged my mixer and brought it outside. You might want to too:)

While the marshmallow mixture is thickening, take your baking pan and coat it very well with oil or cooking spray. Either way, it needs to be well coated! As soon as the ten minutes are up, quickly scrape out all you can out of the bowl and off the whisk handle. You only have about one to two minutes before it begins to "harden", so quickly scrape it off. Anything that you missed, feel free to eat. It's yummy! It tastes just like melted marshmallows, but maybe even better! But before you start licking, make sure that you do your best to smooth out the top of the marshmallows in the pan. It becomes "firm" very fast and it won't be workable.

Once the marshmallows are smoothed out, stick them away somewhere where you aren't tempted to snack on them before their time:) Leave them there for twelve or more hours. This will allow them time to cure.

The next day, take your marshmallow pan out to a clean surface. I used a cutting board, just because it's easier to clean up. Take your bowl, and mix together an even amount of powdered sugar and cornstarch. Sprinkle as much as you need onto the cutting board, then flip the marshmallow pan upside down. If it doesn't come out, flip it back up and take a powder coated spatula and go around the outside of the pan. This should work, so flip it marshmallows out.

With them out of the pan, you will want to sprinkle the top with the powdered sugar/cornstarch mixture. Also, do your best to coat your knife with it. Then, cut the big marshmallow blob into strips, cutting those strips into squares and so on. If you want mini marshmallows, then cut those squares in half.

I'm not sure I recommend cutting all the marshmallows at once. They'll just get into a big, goopy pile and that won't be nice. So, just take it one strip at a time. Then, after that stip of marshmallows is cut, put them in the bowl of powdered sugar and move them around so that every part of them is dusted. That way, they won't stick to each other. Then, you can put them all in a big bowl or bag, depending on how or when you plan on serving them.

Even though making homemade marshmallows is cool, why not change those up a little bit more? Here are a few examples that I did:

Coating them in unsweetened cocoa powder was really yummy! The slightly bitter chocolaty taste over the sweet marshmallow was delicious!

Coating them with ground candy canes and peppermints was interesting... no matter how small I ground the candies, they refused to stay on. The flavor wasn't my favorite, but if you like it (and can make them stay on!) great!

Coating them with sprinkles was good! Believe it or not, these actually taste quite a lot like peeps! The sprinkles were also kind of hard to keep on, so I slightly wet them, which helped. What would be fun is to take the marshmallows before they set and pipe it into the shapes of peeps:)

Adding sprinkles to the powdered sugar coating looked cool! This is fun if you don't want the sprinkles to be "overwhelming". In the first picture, quite a few of those marshmallows also had red sprinkles on top of them. It almost gave it a confetti look.

Dying. I didn't dye any of mine, but in some pictures I say, it looked like it would be cool to dye them if you wanted them fancy for a special occasion. I'm quite sure food coloring would work for that, and maybe next time I make these, I'll try!

Flavoring. Another thing I didn't do but want to! It would be really fun to put a drop of peppermint essential oil in these and them have them in hot cocoa! Yum! Or other flavorings would be fun as well, and you could dye them according to their "coloring".

Anyways, there are just a few ideas. Research and be creative! And even if you just leave them like normal marshmallows, they still taste delicious! Enjoy!