I watched the gorgeous Annabel Langbein making marshmallows on her new show, The Free Range Cook, and couldn’t resist trying them out! We adapted her recipe and this one by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall to come up with our own version.
These moreish morsels only have four ingredients – sugar, gelatine, vanilla extract and egg white. The texture is reminiscent of a firm meringue pie topping – quite different from the commercial versions which are bouncy and rubbery (and made in a very different way). These have a lovely old world charm to them.
Make sure you allow plenty of time for the mix to set before cutting – the marshmallows will continue to firm up over the next day or so. Instead of greasing and dusting the pan, we lined it with a sheet of parchment, which was then lightly sprayed with oil. The finished sweets then only needed a light dusting of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar to keep them from sticking together.
- 2 large free range egg whites (as fresh as possible)
- 500g (2¼ cups) white sugar
- 250ml (1 cup) water
- 25g (0.88 oz) leaf gelatine (see Hugh’s recipe if you’re using powdered gelatine)
- ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract (we used homemade)
- mixture of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar, for dusting
1.Line a rectangular baking tray with parchment paper, and lightly spray the top of the paper. I used a 33cm x 22cm (13″ x 9″) roasting tray.
2. In a medium saucepan with a long handle, stir the sugar and water over a low heat until the sugar dissolves, then raise the heat and bring to a rapid boil. Clip on a candy thermometer and boil the syrup until it reaches hard ball stage (122C/252F). This will take approximately 10 – 15 minutes.
3. Soak the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water for about 10 minutes.
4. Before the syrup reaches temperature, place the egg whites in the bowl of a sturdy stand mixer and beat until stiff peaks form. Timing is quite important, and the sugar syrup, egg whites and gelatine need to be ready at the same time. It helps, but isn’t essential, to have two people on the job – one to watch the syrup thermometer and the other to prepare the other ingredients.
5. Once the syrup is at the right temperature, remove the saucepan from the heat. Turn the mixer on to low, and gently trickle the hot syrup into the stiff egg whites, beating constantly as the mixture turns creamy. Please be very careful – the sugar syrup is blindingly hot!
6. As soon as all the syrup is added, quickly remove the gelatine from the water and squeeze out the excess water from the softened leaves, then add the gelatine to the mixing bowl while the mixture is still hot, and beat until combined. Add the vanilla extract and continue beating.
7. Turn the speed up and beat the mixture until it thickens – Annabel suggests beating until the mixing bowl feels just warm – this can take up to 10 minutes. The finished mix will be very thick but still pourable (even thicker than photo below).
8. Scrape the marshmallow into the prepared pan and smooth out the top. Leave to set for at least four hours or overnight. When firm, lift the slab out using the parchment paper, cut with a warm, dry, sharp knife into squares, and dust each with a fine coating of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar mixture.
Of course, once we had homemade marshmallows, we had to make dark chocolate rocky road! We used 500g of tempered dark Belgian chocolate, 125g slivered almonds and 200g of homemade marshmallows, chopped into cubes. It’s wickedly good!
Click here for a printable version of this recipe
Like this:
Like Loading...
Read Full Post »
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 