Heavenly Almond and Rose Marshmallows

Oooh gorgeous pillowy cubes of deliciousness!

Well, for a blog to be named Macarons and Marshmallows means I was bound to be sharing my favourite marshmallow recipe pretty quickly! 

 I’ve been on a bit of marshmallow bender this weekend and also made some banana and strawberry ones! (They sound really weird but, they’re not as odd as they sound!) I have to admit now that I’ve found a recipe that produces such good results, I’m a bit over excited! I keep thinking of other flavour combinations I really want to try out….they’ll be coming your way over the coming months I’m sure! Though, if anyone out there has any ideas they want me to test run for them I’m more than willing to give them a go – I draw the line at clearly disgusting combinations but I’ll rise to any potentially tasty marshmallow challenge anyone wants to throw at me. (What I’ll do with all these marshmallows I can’t say at this point because I can see my waist line falling victim to a large proportion of them if I’m not careful!)

Aaand back to what I was going to tell you about – the Rose and Almond combo. Now this is flavour combination commonly embraced in the middle and near east – countries like Turkey and Greece love their rose water and combine with almonds in tasty treats like Turkish delight, and baklava. I’ve personally always loved the flavour of rose but I totally understand that people think it’s a bit reminiscent of perfume. If you’ve not tried it though, do give it go because it might be your thing. If it’s not don’t worry there is whole world of rose-free-marshmallows out there!

So to make these rose and almond lovelies you need:

100ml Water

20ml Rose Water
23g powdered , unflavoured gelatine
440g caster sugar
160ml golden syrup

1tsp almond extract (if you use flavouring rather than extract you may need a little more than this!)
vegetable oil for greasing
4-5 tbsp cornflour for dusting

Start by putting your water and rosewater together in a large bowl and sprinkle the gelatine powder over the liquid. Now leave this to sit and absorb the liquid, in a process called sponging. This is important to ensure that your gelatine ends up evenly distributed and you don’t get lumps of gelatine in the final mix.

While this sits prepare your dish you will use to set your marshmallows. I use a large rectangular baking dish for mine. All you need to do is coat the dish with a thin layer of vegetable oil. I also prefer to put some strips of baking parchment in either direction across the dish – just to help with easing the set marshmallows out. If you do this – don’t forget to put a bit of oil on the parchment paper too or it will really stick to the marshmallow….trust me….I made that mistake before!

After a few minutes the surface of the liquid will have wrinkled like the photo below. (If you’re confused as to why this mixture looks pink – it’s because I’ve used the photo from my strawberry marshmallows as I thought this would be easier to see the effect than in the clear colourless rosewater)

If like the above there are some gelatine crystals that aren’t soaking in the liquid just give it a quick stir to make sure it all has a chance to start sponging.

Leave this to sit while you prepare the sugar syrup.

Put your sugar and golden syrup into a milk pan (or any pan with a pouring edge) together with just enough water to cover the sugar.

Stir the mixture over a low heat until the sugar dissolves.

Turn the heat to medium and insert a sugar thermometer. Bring the mixture to the boil and keep it boiling until it reaches at least 130⁰C, but don’t let it get up to 140⁰C.

Once the sugar has reached this temperature turn the heat off and let the sugar cool for just a minute or two.

Get your electric beater out and give your water and gelatine mix a brief whisk to make sure your gelatine is evenly mixed through. Now, with the beater running on a medium speed, start slowly pouring your sugar syrup into your gelatine mixture.

Don’t be concerned that the mixture gets very liquid at this point, it should do this at this point! When you’ve got all your syrup into the mixture turn the speed up and beat the mixture until it is very thick and bulky. At this point you also need to add your almond extract. (Plus any food colouring you might wish to use)

When the mixture is thick enough so it wraps itself around your beaters, and goes stringy like chewing gum when you pull your beaters out of it (switched off!!) - then it’s ready!

Pour your mixture into the prepared dish and leave it for a few hours to set. You can put it in the fridge to speed things up, just be careful that the mixture is cold before you do!

Once your marshmallows have set, ease them out of the dish and onto a board dusted with a mixture of icing sugar and corn flour. I actually turn it all out on to greaseproof paper – it makes clearing up much easier as you can just fold it all up and put it in the bin when you’re done!

Get a sharp knife or a pizza wheel and cut the marshmallow into pieces as big or small as you like. Put a bit of vegetable oil on the knife if it is sticking. Then coat all the sides of the marshmallow in the icing sugar and corn flour mixture.

Put them into an airtight container and they’ll keep for ages!

Oh and a little tip – these are really good in hot chocolate!

The banana and strawberry ones used the same recipe and method except the liquid right at the beginning was banana and strawberry smoothie!

On principle you could make a marshmallow out of pretty much any liquid! Try out some for yourself, I know I’ll be doing some experimenting! Only one rule, if you’re using oil flavouring use water as your base liquid and add your flavouring just after you’ve added all your sugar syrup. Any other liquid you can use as your base liquid at the beginning.

Oh and if you fancy trying to make some grown up marshmallows (Baileys maybe?!) Don’t forget, alcohol effects how gelatine works, so if you use alcohol reduce your overall liquid content by about ¼ to ensure the mixture sets right.

Happy Marshmallowing!

xx



Homemade Lemon Curd

I personally can’t understand buying lemon curd from a store any more, not now I’ve made it at home and realised how easy it is, and how much better it is than anything on a shop shelf. Agreed, if you get the posh stuff in the shops you’re going to come pretty close to homemade, but you’re spending unnecessary pennies because making it at home is dead cheap too!

The only down side is that it does take a bit of patience and a keen eye to make sure it doesn’t over cook, but making it once will leave you with enough curd to keep you going for a while. And actually, doubling or tripling the recipe wouldn’t mean it will make much longer to cook out really so in less than an hour you could make enough to keep you going for months!

Homemade Lemon Curd is so lusciously zingy and smooth, and not at all ‘stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouthy’ (Yeah you heard it, that’s a real phrase….) Then in comparison I find store bought lemon curd very glutinous and unnatural tasting. I suspect a lot of cornflour goes into the mixture to thicken it, but it just ruins the smooth texture you can get with just a bit of patience! Also just how the supermarkets manage to make their lemon curd so fluorescent is beyond me! Just using the egg yolks and lemons themselves gives a lush yellow colour, you don’t need any food colouring at all, let alone neon stuff!…..which leads me to question just how much real lemon actually goes into the store bought stuff!

Ok store bought lemon curd rant over….on to the recipe…you’ll need

Grated zest and juice of 4 large Lemons

4 Large Eggs

12oz (350g) golden caster sugar

8oz (225g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 dessertspoon corn flour

This recipe makes about 1 litre of lemon curd so you’ll need to sterilize around 3 or 4 350g jars. To sterilize the jars you simply need to put them in a pan of water and boil them. Then, to dry them, put them on a baking sheet and put them in the oven at a low temperature until they are dry. Easy! Once you’ve put the jars in the oven, start making your curd, they should be dry by the time you’ve finished. (Remember, you don’t want to be putting hot contents into a cold jar, you risk smashing the jar – so filling them straight from the oven is best)

Sterilizing is really important when making jams and preserves as any bacteria in the jar will prevent mean the contents spoil much quicker. It essentially defeats the object of making a preserve. There are loads of other ways of sterilizing, steaming, dry heat, the microwave – they’re all effective. Check out this this e-How article, it features lots of different methods.

So, on to the recipe…

Begin by grating the zest of your lemons using a fine grater. You can of course use a zester but I prefer to have very small bits of zest rather than bigger strands. But just do whichever you prefer! Once you’ve zested than half the lemons and get as much of the juice out of them as possible.

Whatever you do, don’t do this wrong way round – there is a time when I juiced the lemon, realised I’d forgotten to zest them and tried to zest the hollow lemon halves….not easy!!

Next, crack your eggs into a saucepan and whisk them until they’re blended.

Then simply add all the rest of your ingredients to the pan. Use a sieve to strain your lemon juice in case there are any stray pips or pith.

Put the pan on a medium heat and whisk it continuously until it thickens, this will take about 8-10 minutes. Once it has keep it on a low heat for a couple more minutes to ensure there’s no raw corn flour flavour in there. At this point it shouldn’t be so thick you can spread it, it just needs to be about the thickness of double cream. Remember, it will thicken more once it sets. If you get it too thick at this point you’ll get something reminiscent of that dreaded shop bought curd!

Now pour your curd into the hot sterilized jars and fill them as full as you can and then cover with a wax disk. This means prevents air getting to the curd and means it will last much longer until you first use it. Seal with a jar lid or greaseproof paper and an elastic band and leave the jar to cool.

Once it’s cooled completely you will be able to label the jar. If you do this when the jar is still warm the glue will just melt and make the label peel off!

And there you go, perfect homemade lemon curd that kicks the a** of shop bought curd any day!

Now here’s another bonus….you’ve now got the recipe for any curd you like – orange, lime – whatever – just interchange it with the lemon. For lime I’d use 6 limes, and with oranges maybe 2-3 depending on the size. You could even use grapefruit…..hmmmm I wonder what that would be like….actually surely you could use anything that you can juice?.... Pineapple? That might be bit weird…Apple? Again I think that’d be weird…Oooh raspberry…..that could be good! I think I’m going to be broadening my curd horizons and trying some if these out!

xx





The Oh So Humble Jam Tart

I feel I must start by saying I can make more complex things than Jam Tarts – I promise! It’s just that last week's talk of making them in my Grandma’s kitchen as child kind of made me want to make them again! I have made a bit more effort with them than back when I was 5 years old though. Oh, and apologies for the poor quality photos on this post – I’m having some issues with my camera, it’s being argumentative – so I’ve had to use a camera phone just this once!

Just before writing this I did a quick bit of Googling to see if the Jam Tart has any interesting history. I thought maybe they had been around for a couple of hundred years, but as it turns out it’s possible people have been enjoying these simple treats since the 8^th Century! Of course their form and content have changed a lot since then but they were good enough for the British Museum(among other venues) to make space for some of the oldest in an exhibition! Check it Out....

Anyway, back to the 21^st Century Jam Tart…

I’m sure that many of you accomplished bakers out there really don’t need a recipe for Jam Tarts, but for all the first timers and novices, I’m going to set it out for you anyway! J

Start by making your pastry. To make about 18-20 tarts you’ll need:

8oz plain flour

2oz unsalted butter

2oz lard or vegetable fat (Trex)

2-3 tbsp water

Pinch of salt

Mix the flour, salt and the two fats together with your fingertips until they resemble breadcrumbs. You can miss out the lard if you prefer of course but I much prefer the texture you get with the half and half combo, it’s shorter and crumblier when baked. But of course, it’s a preference thing so try both and see which you like!

If at this point you’re worrying that you’re putting salt in dessert pastry – don’t worry – I find this works better for a dessert as sweet as the Jam Tart, the salt offset the sugar a bit to take the edge off the sweetness…meaning you can eat more before you start to feel sick – bonus!

Just keep adding the water bit by bit and knead until you’ve got a smooth dough. It might take a bit less than the recipe, it might take a bit more. It’ll vary depending on the humidity and the temperature of your hands so it will probably be different each time you make pastry. Be careful not to over-knead the pastry though. If you overwork it the gluten in the flour will cause it to become much too elastic, and the baked pastry will be chewy instead of lovely and crumbly.

Once you’ve got everything combined wrap it tightly in cling film and pop it in the fridge for an hour or so.

Once the pastry has chilled I like to knead in a few drops of vanilla and almond extract, to make the pastry that bit tastier. (The almond in particular works really well with raspberry jam!) Plus that little bit of extra moisture means that when you’re rolling out on a floured board it’ll help prevent the pastry drying out on you!

(wow….really need to get that camera sorted out before the next post….)

Cut out rounds slightly bigger than the top of the wells in your tart tin. (I always use the ones with the scalloped edges as that’s what my grandma always used)

Gently place each circle into the wells of your tart tin. Then, scrunch up a pastry off-cut into a ball and use this to gently ease the pastry into the sides of the wells. I find this works really well for getting the pastry right into the edges, and it prevents you making any nicks in the pastry with your nails. (Check out my baking tin – old school isn’t it – it’s actually the one my grandma and I used when I was a kid! J Oh and in case you’re wondering, it’s not a dirty tin I promise, all the marks are just down to its age! )

Then all you need to do is fill your cases with whatever jam or curd you choose to use. (I used Homemade Lemon Curd and Seedless Raspberry Jam) Fill the cases about 2/3 full, any more than that and they’ll overflow – and let me tell you – jam melted onto a baking tin is NOT so fun to clean off.

You can put the tarts in the oven straight away just as they are – but I like to put a wee bit of pastry decoration on the top.

Finally, before the tarts go in the oven brush any exposed pastry with beaten egg. It makes the pastry go golden brown and beautifully shiny. Now bake the tarts in the oven for about 8-10 minutes or until they’re golden. You won’t harm them by peeking in the oven a couple of times to see if they’re done, so just keep an eye on them.

Now…this is important….when they’re done for goodness sake don’t try and get the tarts out of the tin until they’ve cooled for a good 10-15 minutes. While I’d love to get people making jam tarts again, I don’t want to be responsible for inducing some serious sugar burns!

(…and all the lovely detail of the golden brown pastry is ruined by the camera phone…sigh….)

And there you have it –lovely, yummy, albeit very pixelated Jam Tarts, just like Grandma used to make.

Now for anyone wondering about the aforementioned Homemade Lemon Curd - don’t you worry – I’ve got a post for that coming soon!

xx