Marshmallows

You will need an 20cm (8 inch) square cake tin lined with baking paper then dusted with cornflour.

Put the sugar, liquid glucose and water in a pan and dissolve the sugar over a low heat until the mixture is clear. Don’t be tempted to fiddle or stir the sugar – just keep gently tilting the pan from side to side until the sugar melts. Once you have a clear liquid then turn up the heat, bring the mixture to a boil – pop in your temperature probe and allow it to boil to a temperature of 119 degrees centigrade. TurnThis will take about 5 minutes.

When the temperature has reached 114 degrees whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until you have stiff peaks – then with the whisk still running carefully pour over the hot sugar syrup in a slow steady stream. Keep the whisks going and continue to whisk until the mixture has cooled to body temperature. – about 3-4 minutes. (When you pop your finger into the mixture it will feel neither hot or cold)  At the end of the whisking period you will need to add the dried fruit powder and the vanilla.

Once the mixture has cooled then add the gelatine.

My tip here is when you have poured all of the sugar out of the pan drop the wet and drained gelatine leaves into the warm empty pan. The residual heat will be enough to dissolve them completely – pour this liquid gelatine into the meringue and continue to mix.  You will see the mixture start to thicken.

Transfer the marshmallow mix into the prepared tin and smooth it out with the back of a spoon or angled palette knife. Leave to set in a cool place for at least four hours.

Turn out of the tin and peel back the papers.  Using a greased sharp knife neaten off the edges then cut into even sized cubes.  I then like to sift over a thin dusting of cornflour to the tops and the bottoms.

Store in an airtight tin or cellophane gift bags for up to three weeks.  Like all sweets marshmallows will go sticky if the humidity gets to them.

TIP The recipe above is for blackcurrant and vanilla but you can make many different fruit flavours. For Christmas try Strawberry powder and use as for the blackcurrants and try ½ tsp ground cinnamon in place of vanilla.  A sort of mulled wine marshmallow – fabulous !

If you are unable to get hold of dried fruit powder you can use a fresh fruit puree but you will need to boil it down so that it is the consistency of jam.