food project: homemade marshmallows

one thing bryan and i like to do each year is food gifts for christmas, so i decided to make marshmallows. hannah and i had made some last year, and they were freakin' phenomenal - rich, creamy, fluffy - 10,000x better than store bought.

this year, i used this recipe (and for those of you without a candy thermometer, look at the 2nd recipe on the page, near the bottom, on the right).

the basic concept is unflavored gelatin and water:


mixed with a cooked mixture of sugar, corn syrup, and water:


and beaten until hugely fluffy (my only real advice to you during this process is do not smell the mixture until it is white and fluffy. trust me.). you can add vanilla (i upped the amount called for in the recipe to 2 1/2 tsp). spread it in a prepared pan (lined with oiled foil or plastic wrap).


once they've had a few hours to set, dump them out onto powdered sugar and cut; roll each one in powdered sugar. this is very sticky business (literally - these things are insanely sticky). my recommendation is to use kitchen shears to snip them into strips, then roll the strips in powdered sugar, then cut them into cubes. it took me about 90 minutes of painfully tedious cutting before i figured out rolling the whole strips in the sugar made things go way faster.


i also made peppermint ones, with peppermint extract (i used 1 tsp vanilla and 1 - 1/2 tsp peppermint). oh yeah, i know that sounds good in hot chocolate, right?! i wanted them to not be plain white like the others, so i mixed red food coloring into a small bit of the marshmallows, then swirled that into the white.



and that's it! it's really simple. and so delicious. so all you lucky folks out there who are receiving a package in the mail from us - open it, quickly. there are marshmallows in there!