Homemade Marshmallows!

Do you like things that are sticky?

Do you like things that are sweet?

oh.... no... I don't mean... that.

I'm talking about homemade marshmallows! I had been itching to try the marshmallow recipe from joyofbaking.com as part of my obsession with getting away from store-bought stuff and heading in a more old school direction with food.

Go homemade!!!

So, do you have sugar? Corn syrup? Gelatin? Vanilla? Well, you've got pretty much everything you need to make marshmallows!

This recipe was perfect. Everything worked out the first time through, even without a candy thermometer. And I'm definitely no candy expert. Every time I've tried making fudge I've ended up with a dismal ultra-sweet mess-in-a-pan... yuck. The instructions at joyofbaking.com are awesome and very precise.

Here is the syrup cooking away. Even though the sugar seemed to be getting quite caramelized, the marshmallows turned out gorgeous and pure white.

I even overcame my fear of this lovely KitchenAid mixer. The syrup needed to be whipped for 10 minutes and you can bet your ass I was motivated to try anything that would allow me not to use the hand mixer. My husband gave this to me for Christmas -wait for it- three years ago (!) but I had never used it. How stupid! It was so easy to use and worked like a charm.

Here's the finished product. The edges of these marshmallows are extremely sticky and need to be coated with something to keep them from being pulled apart or drying out. I rolled some marshmallows in plain toasted coconut, some in macaroon mix, and the rest in cocoa powder.

This recipe makes a lot of marshmallows. They're not really the kind of thing you can eat a batch of in one sitting. I think they would make a nice little gift wrapped up brown paper and tied with a pretty ribbon. People were very intrigued by the fact that you could make your own marshmallows and they are lovely and old fashioned.

Happy baking!