"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Steve's Evil Kitchen: Catching Fire

My kitchen posts always have a title riffing on a horror movie, so why "Catching Fire?" Well, my kitchen caught on fire while making these!

Coffee/Chocolate Marshmallows
Recipes for homemade marshmallows are almost identical; there's very little room for improvement.

I brewed coffee, then took one cup and chilled to ice cold in a freezer. One half cup was used to bloom 3/4 oz (3 packages) gelatin in large mixer bowl. The other half was put into a saucepan [and here I should stress you should use a large saucepan - 3 qts at least - as I had a boilover that caught fire] with 1.5 cups granulated sugar, 1/4 c. cocoa (more would've been better), 1/8 tsp. salt, 1 c. corn syrup (3/4 c. with 1/4 c. honey would be nice with vanilla, but not chocolate/coffee) and heated to soft ball, 240F. The syrup was then added in a stream to the gelatin while on a slow mixer speed. Then the mixer was put to the highest speed (within reason) to aerate; I stopped too early - the mixture should be like packaged marshmallow creme, but I stopped at what would be "soft peaks" if making meringue [rookie mistake].

I mixed 1/4c. powdered sugar and 1/4 c. cornstarch (adding cocoa again here would've been a good idea), then used this to coat a buttered 9x13x2 metal pan. The marshmallow is poured into the pan and spread with a lightly oiled and sugar/starch-powdered spoon. The contents were banged on a table to try to dislodge large bubbles, then coated on top with more sugar/cornstarch. After sitting uncovered overnight, the marshmallows were cut using a pizza wheel that was coated with oil and sugar/starch.

I'm still cleaning up after the fire.

3 comments:

Robyn said...

The one time we made these (I was a kid), I remember wondering why anyone would think of trying this before the invention of the electric mixer. Just on the off-chance that beating the bejeezus out of candy and gelatin would result in something interesting? Quite a leap of faith. (Kind of like the first person to roast and brew coffee. Seriously?)

SteveQ said...

Well, the first time anyone tried it, they used mallows from the marsh (hence the name), which might react differently than gelatin.

Carilyn said...

I looooooooove homemeade marshmallows and these sound delicious! Sorry about the fire,though.