Vanilla Marshmallows

Of all the desserts in the world, marshmallows fall towards the lower half of my list. There are sweets I like less, but many others I'd rather eat before a vanilla marshmallow. I don't even like them in my hot chocolate. I'm good with vanilla marshmallows as the topping for s'mores cookies or s'mores brownies, or melted down to become rice krispies or oat fudge bars, but that's about it. So I hesitated to make these, because what on earth was I going to do with 48 vanilla marshmallows? I felt badly about skipping the adult hot chocolate though, and I had just ordered a bunch of gelatin sheets to try out some recipes from Momofuku Milk Bar, so I told myself to make the marshmallows first and figure it out later.

As with the last (few?) recipes from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, this recipe could have used just a little more clarity in instruction, starting with the bloom strength of gelatin sheets to use. I opted for gold strength (200 bloom) since I figured that was closest to "typical gelatin in America". The instructions in Baked just say to bloom the gelatin sheets (all precious 12 of them!) in very cold water, while you go about setting other things up, without actually specifying how long the gelatin should soak in the cold water.

My gelatin sheet package recommended cutting the sheets into 1-inch strips and soaking them for 10 minutes in the cold water, so that's what I did, using a metal bowl I had first chilled in the freezer for 60 minutes.

Meanwhile, I set up my mixing bowl with the ½ cup corn syrup, starting heating a medium pan of water (to use as the bottom of a make-shift double boiler), and I started my saucepan of ½ cup water, ½ cup corn syrup, and 2 cups sugar for making the sugar syrup. After my 10 minute timer went off, I gently squeezed my gelatin strips to wring out the extra water and put them back in their metal bowl. Here, I again hit a clarity snag, although it was kind of my fault.

I read this recipe at least 5 times before starting, and despite a chemistry degree (boiling water doesn't ever reach 220°F if there's only water in the pan), I thought for sure the instructions were saying to wait for the boiling water to reach 220°F before you start melting the gelatin. It took making that reading mistake, shrugging at the weird mistake, starting to melt the gelatin, adding the melted gelatin to the corn syrup and mixing it on low, while anxiously watching it set, to realize the recipe instructions actually meant the sugar syrup should reach 220°F before you start to melt the gelatin so the gelatin doesn't have a chance to set prior to adding the hot sugar syrup. I debated what to do, and decided that since my sugar syrup was taking ages to reach 235-240°F, I should remelt my gelatin a little over the still hot saucepan of water. I did this, mostly because I was afraid the hot sugar syrup might shock my gelatin-corn syrup gel in a bad way.

After this small snag, everything proceeded according to the written instructions, with the whipping of the gelatin-sugar syrup taking exactly 5 minutes to turn fluffy white. I added my 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and ⅛ teaspoon kosher salt, beat on high for another minute, and then quickly poured everything into my pre-shortening'ed 9x13-inch pan, dusted everything with powdered sugar, and let the marshmallows set for 6 hours.

We tried the marshmallows after 6 hours and I was not very impressed. They tasted good enough, definitely vanilla-y, but they were still incredibly gooey. Caleb made a s'more out of one gorgeous vanilla marshmallow round, honey graham crackers, and some Tcho milk chocolate, but the marshmallow was so gooey the whole thing came out of the s'more when he took a bite. He was not super impressed. Fast forward another 18 hours (so a total of 24 hours after making the marshmallow "fluff"), and the vanilla marshmallows were the perfect texture. Still light and fluffy but not overly gooey. I ate three of them, and I don't like marshmallows (just to remind you). I'm still planning on doing "something else" with them, but these definitely exceeded my expectations (and I didn't ruin them by re-melting the gelatin). If you are a marshmallow lover, or know someone who is, these would be a perfect treat to make. They require a somewhat obscene amount of bowls and pans for something "so simple", but they only take about 30 minutes of your time and 24 hours advanced planning. So, all in all, worth it....probably.

Interested? Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other bakers thought of these.