Cooking Day 15: Marshmallows!!!
OMG...today was an insanely crazy, busy day. Not only was I working all day long, but I felt like I was in the kitchen the whole day! This week is Administrative Professionals Week and I know that some of my co-workers have been struggling with working from home, so I decided to do a Social Distance Treat Exchange. This is happening tomorrow, but today was all about prepping for it and prepping for dinner. This meant setting up my laptop in the dining room, on my portable table, on top of my dining room table so I can run to it every few minutes.
This morning, my Sous Chef was my youngest, Aidan. We started with the treat for the exchange, homemade marshmallows. I know, I know...ooohh...ahhhhh. It sounds so fancy and complicated and OOHH LA LA, but it really isn't. We did two batches, one at a time. To begin, I made Aidan get all our mise en place ready. He got together all of our ingredients and was so excited to get started, he threw in the 3 packets of gelatin and 1/2 cup of cool water in the bowl of my stand mixer. Now, what he didn't do and I should have checked, was mix it together. No worries, once I saw it, I gave it a quick mix. He was sure to do it on the second batch. SUCCESS!!! LESSONS LEARNED!!!
In a saucepan, I put together 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of light corn syrup, 1/2 cup of cool water, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt and put it on medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved then raise the heat.
When the mixture comes to a full rolling boil and let it boil for one minute without stirring. After one minute remove from heat. Place the bowl back onto the stand mixer and attach the whisk attachment and turn it on to low while slowly pouring in the sugar mixture.
Once it is all combined, gradually turn the mixer up to high, I go from stir to 4, to 6. At this point, I try to avoid going faster because hot sugar will burn the crap out of you. Let the mixer go at this speed for 8 minutes, the consistency will change dramatically and the temperature will cool down. After the 8 minutes, stop the mixer and add in your flavoring. For the first batch, we used vanilla, on the second batch we used Almond Extract. After adding the flavoring, mix again on speed 6 or 8 for 2 more minutes.
Then pour it into a sheet pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. I used a paper towel to evenly spread it around. Put the pan in the refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight.
When you are ready to cut it, cover with powdered sugar, dust a clean surface with more powdered sugar to put the marshmallow onto. You will also need a bowl of powdered sugar to dust each cut marshmallow. We used a rolling cutter which was good for the scalloped edge rectangles. We tried the heart-shaped rolling cutter, but that didn't work as well. Luckily, I remembered that I had biscuit cutters! The smallest round cutter worked the best and honestly, I think it was better than the scalloped edge rolling cutter.
These were so good and the boys could not stop eating the scraps. I hope you enjoy them too!
This morning, my Sous Chef was my youngest, Aidan. We started with the treat for the exchange, homemade marshmallows. I know, I know...ooohh...ahhhhh. It sounds so fancy and complicated and OOHH LA LA, but it really isn't. We did two batches, one at a time. To begin, I made Aidan get all our mise en place ready. He got together all of our ingredients and was so excited to get started, he threw in the 3 packets of gelatin and 1/2 cup of cool water in the bowl of my stand mixer. Now, what he didn't do and I should have checked, was mix it together. No worries, once I saw it, I gave it a quick mix. He was sure to do it on the second batch. SUCCESS!!! LESSONS LEARNED!!!
In a saucepan, I put together 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of light corn syrup, 1/2 cup of cool water, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt and put it on medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved then raise the heat.
When the mixture comes to a full rolling boil and let it boil for one minute without stirring. After one minute remove from heat. Place the bowl back onto the stand mixer and attach the whisk attachment and turn it on to low while slowly pouring in the sugar mixture.
Once it is all combined, gradually turn the mixer up to high, I go from stir to 4, to 6. At this point, I try to avoid going faster because hot sugar will burn the crap out of you. Let the mixer go at this speed for 8 minutes, the consistency will change dramatically and the temperature will cool down. After the 8 minutes, stop the mixer and add in your flavoring. For the first batch, we used vanilla, on the second batch we used Almond Extract. After adding the flavoring, mix again on speed 6 or 8 for 2 more minutes.
Then pour it into a sheet pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. I used a paper towel to evenly spread it around. Put the pan in the refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight.
When you are ready to cut it, cover with powdered sugar, dust a clean surface with more powdered sugar to put the marshmallow onto. You will also need a bowl of powdered sugar to dust each cut marshmallow. We used a rolling cutter which was good for the scalloped edge rectangles. We tried the heart-shaped rolling cutter, but that didn't work as well. Luckily, I remembered that I had biscuit cutters! The smallest round cutter worked the best and honestly, I think it was better than the scalloped edge rolling cutter.
These were so good and the boys could not stop eating the scraps. I hope you enjoy them too!
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