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