So once upon a time, around, oh, 4 years ago, I was a pastry chef. My boss told me to make marshmallows. I had never done this. 30 minutes later, I had successfully broken the whisk attachment on a 30 qt. mixer. I was also wearing more marshmallow than the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and was curiously sticking to any stainless steel surfaces I stood near. Needless to say, those marshmallows were a big, fat FAIL. Oh, and for future reference, before you send ANYONE off to make mallows for the first time, you might just want to tell them that leaving the mixture in the mixing bowl for longer than 30 seconds turns it into candy CEMENT. Just a thought. Last week, I taught my food studies class on the marshmallow, and had to share this story with my students when they asked why I had not made homemade marshmallows for them. Because marshmallow making scares me more than that freaky little clown on IT who used to like to hang out in sewers and break off the arms of children. It scares me more than crackheads with babies. It scares me more than crackhead clowns that live in the sewer with babies. I am just saying. But last week, I also had to rewrite a giant research paper, and therefore reverted to my grad school procrastination technique: cooking and baking. I would much rather risk breaking my sexy 6 qt Artisan Kitchen Aid than forcing myself to to cut another 10,000 words out of my paper, so mallows it was. I mainly used this recipe from Alton Brown, and I used this recipe from Ina Garten for applying the toasted coconut to my mallows. I also made sure to read a crap ton of reviews from these recipes, in hopes of preventing the disastrous outcome of my last batch of mallows.
The process is pretty simple–heat a mixture of sugar, corn syrup, salt and water (or in the case of my passion fruit mallow, passion fruit juice) to 240 F, while a packet of gelatin sits with the rest of the liquid in the mixer bowl. When it comes to temp., you are supposed to slowly pour it into the mixer while the whisk is running to combine and whip. Alton says to pour it down the side of the bowl so hot sugar doesn’t splatter everywhere. When I did this, I ended up with a giant lump of solid, not soft syrup in the center of my mallows.
Later batches were much more successful when I poured the syrup right over the whisk. You let it whisk for 15 minutes, until it is light and fluffy and starting to cool down. Then you transfer it to a pan coated in veggie oil, cornstarch and powdered sugar to prevent sticking, let it dry for four hours, cut and serve.
My biggest problem was preventing it from sticking in the pan and breaking my mixer, so I started off like Alton suggests and had a spatula sprayed with vegetable oil at the ready. This worked for about five seconds, and then my hands entered the picture and there were about a thousand tiny white strings of mallow everywhere. Then I remembered that one review said to dip your hands in water to remove mallow. I set up a bowl of hot water next to the mixer bowl, and constantly dipped my hands in water, grabbed mallow out of the bowl, and set it in the pan, spreading it evenly. This worked like a charm.
And oh ma gah if there isn’t anything more delicious than a freaking still-soft, slightly warm marshmallow. I made one with passion fruit, and the other I made plain and just rolled it in toasted coconut. One batch made like, 8 dozen mallows. I am fairly certain I ate 6 dozen before Easter…by myself. Ain’t no shame. And now for some mallow porn:
~LTG!
