Reader Post: Homemade Marshmallows – a first time for everything!

So one of our friends and followers Rich Kolb mentioned a successful attempt at making Marshmallows on twitter and I was intrigued. He agreed to write about his experience and share how it went. Now that snow is falling around a lot of the USA and Canada, this could be a great family project to prevent cabin fever!

Marshmallows
by Rich Kolb

I was looking for gift ideas for my wife for Christmas. You see, shopping for my wife is rather hard. We’re both rather frugal and we’re pretty well set in what we like. The problem that arises with that is that our wish lists are pretty specific and if one of us is out and about and sees something off that list at a good price it’s not unheard of for us to buy it, hand it to the other one when we get home and say something along the lines of ‘Here, I bought this for you to give me for Christmas.’

So there I was, looking for a gift idea to give my wife, I was hoping to find something handmade and unique. I wasn’t having much luck and then I stumbled upon a random website with gift ideas, and one of them was homemade marshmallows. This worked out great, my wife is a huge smores fan, and they can only get better with homemade marshmallows.

I started searching the internet, and found several recipes, but the one that stuck out the most was this one:
http://www.bhg.com/recipe/candy/homemade-marshmallows/, from Better Homes and Gardens. The BHG New Cook Book has been a staple in my house for as long as I can remember. I found that I had most of the ingredients already, I only had to buy some gelatin and a candy thermometer. I’ve talked to a few people about using a candy thermometer, and a lot of people are intimidated by them, but I found there really is nothing to it.

I read the recipe several times, I always like to have a pretty good idea of what the next step will be. I didn’t follow it exactly, I decided that I would use real egg whites instead of an egg white product. That had more to do with my lack of ability to find anything suitable a week before Christmas then anything else. Plus, I figured we’ve been eating eggs for centuries and we’re all still alive. My only recommendation is that if you use real eggs you separate them into a different bowl to make sure that they’re good before you
contaminate more ingredients.

On to the cooking. I found that it was pretty simple to follow the directions, the only gotcha I had was on step 3, where it said 12-15 minutes total. Either I have a super stove, or they meant that entire step took that long. At least I was keeping a close eye on things and it didn’t cause me any problems. After I had chilled them I used a paring knife to cut them into small pieces. One of the things that I liked was that I could make various sizes, which has been handy for us as we’ve used them in smores, hot chocolate, and just for random
snacking.

All in all, I’m glad I took the risk and made them. My observations have been that homemade marshmallows are much more flavorful than anything I’ve found in the store. They are sweeter than any brands I’ve found, and I’ve decided that I could easily adapt the recipe to make other flavors, like coconut or almond, which is something I hope to try soon. The melt faster, so far we’ve only microwaved them and put them in the over for smores, I expect they’ll melt over a campfire faster than store bought ones too.

If you decide to make something like this yourself I would offer the following tips, read the recipe a few times, it’s nice to not be surprised by things, keep a close eye on what’s on the stove, boiling sugar could turn into a disaster quick, and it’s pretty dang hot, and one thing I’m glad I did first, test fit the thermometer on your pan. With the way it was setup out of the package it wouldn’t have worked and the window I had to get it set was barely long enough. If I hadn’t test fit it I would have ended up getting the thermometer in the pan right when it was due to come off the stove.

—
Richard Kolb II