Monday, July 19, 2010

Operation Marshmallow Fluff

I have to make cupcakes next week (spoiler alert!), so in preparation for that, I thought I'd try to make my own marshmallow fluff. Yeah, I know. I'm totally out of my mind, but I'm actually not as crazy as you'd think. I'm doing this as PREP. Which means, I'm not going to attempt this crazy assed idea the day BEFORE I need said cupcakes. That's smart. That means I've got all my marbles. right?

I got my gelatin softening then continued on with phase 2. One cup of light corn syrup. Uh oh. Do I have enough? Please please please...a tipped up, drained out corn syrup bottle later, and I'm left with 3/4 of a cup. Crap. Do you know how much I love Google? It's saved my life time and time again. I honestly don't know what I was doing before Google. Probably just abandoning the project altogether for a quick (angry) drive to the store.

Anyway, honey can be substituted for corn syrup (this freaks me out a little because I kinda refer to corn syrup as the sugar devil). So shrugging my shoulders and figuring Kraft Canada knew a little more than I did on the subject, I topped up my cup with honey.

honey and corn syrup don't mix

I realized two things. 1) it took me longer to get my sugar up to 240 than my recipe states -- 7-8 minutes it was not. That could have been due to the honey. I have no idea. My stove is also super stupid in that it boils water at the three mark, so putting anything on HIGH is completely out of the question and it also means it takes me a while to actually figure out where medium heat is; 2) honey effects the taste. It's much harder to taste the honey once they've cooled and hardened which is kind of a bummer. I thought these marshmallows could be honey accented marshmallows or honey infused marshmallows. Oh how fancy that would have been. Infused. (I like that better.)

Anyway, they're still quite nice. Super soft, light as a cloud, melt in your mouth. 

I thought I'd make some mini marshmallows with one of my larger star piping tips

so pretty!

want my favourite marshmallow recipe? Go here

Mini marshmallows are fun and all, but cutting them ends up being a bit time consuming. I like to use kitchen scissors, so that part's not so bad. It's when they stick together on the cut ends that sucks. I ended up individually dusting each marshmallow end with icing sugar (that's why some are more like mini marshmallow sticks. I started to get a little impatient).

Oh. I almost forgot. My tub of marshmallow fluff. The idea was that maybe if it wasn't exposed to the air, it wouldn't solidify. Wanna know how that turned out?

I now have one plastic tub shaped marshmallow.

microwaving for a mere 30 seconds solves that problem, but I don't know how long it'll last. Maybe I can wrap it with something to insulate it? Maybe I'm going to buy some fluff instead? Maybe I should have Googled this idea in the first place? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Oh well. I guess we'll be left with the impossible task of eating all these marshmallows. I wonder what we should do with them...



On a side note, you know, since we're talking about gelatin, did you see the winners of the Jell-o mold competition? Amazing!

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