BAKING PROJECT

Cake by VioletK@photobucket

Kids usually love marshmallows, my daughter like to sprinkle it on her chocolate smoothie. Making marshmallows doesn’t involve any baking, but I thought it would be nice to know how to make one, especially when we can make marshmallow fondant out of it. And maybe this tutorial will be helpful in areas where it is not easy to get halal marshmallows. This recipe is taken from my favourite book, “The River Cottage Family Cookbook” by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall & Fizz Carr. Be careful as it involves boiling sugar.

Ingredient

Method

Sift the icing sugar and cornflour. Take a shallow square pan (I use the one to make swiss roll). Grease it with a generous amount of vegetable oil, then coat with the sugar mixture. Set aside.

Take 1/2 cup of lukewarm water, mix into the gelatine. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved. Add a few drop of colouring if you want to. I used yellow. Set aside.

Make a sugar syrup with the sugar and 1 cup of water. Mix the sugar and water in a saucepan on slow fire. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Then stop stirring. If you have a candy thermometer, dip it into the sugar syrup until it reach 252F ie. the hardball stage. Immediately turn off the heat. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, just leave the pan and let the syrup boil. This will take quite some time, but watch closely as you don’t want to end up with a caramel. Soon the syrup will become thick. Take a teaspoon and drizzle it into a glass of water. If it turns into a hard ball, then turn off the fire.

Pour the gelatine into the sugar syrup and mix well. Here, you will see the mixture bubbling furiously like in the picture above. Its a bit scary actually, but don’t worry, keep on stirring.

While waiting for the sugar syrup, beat the egg whites until stiff. Reduce the mixer speed to low and pour the above mixture into the egg white. Slowly and a little at a time. Keep the speed at medium and just keep on stirring until it becomes thick.

Pour the marshmallow into the oiled pan and let it set. The book says 2 hours, but mine didn’t set firmly and the middle part was still watery. In the end, I put it in the fridge and after a few hours, it turn out ok.

Dust the cutting board with the sugar and cornstarch mixture, oil your knife. Remove the marshmallow from the pan (this is quite tricky too, I had to peel the marshmallows out even though I’ve already oiled the pan). Cut as you wish.

The texture and taste did turn out as expected, but frankly it is too sweet for me, I can’t even finish a bite. Considering the steps involve in making the marshmallow, if you’re having it only once in a while, then probably it is best to just buy the ready made ones. But at least now we know how to make one.

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