Santa and caramels and marshmallows
Dec. 8th, 2011 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
venetia_sassyMum went to see Nephew #1 in his preschool Christmas concert today. He was dressed as Santa and shaking maracas (in time!) for Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Awww.
*
The caramels remain incredibly delicious (especially with a sprinkle of sea salt) but cutting them up is tedious. More muscle power would help, I suspect. The marshmallows however were very easy and only a bit messy.
I am not a fan of supermarket marshmallows - sticky, gluey, all sugar (okay, faint flavouring) and you can't scrape them off your teeth. Toasted marshmallows were not a part of my (Aussie) childhood but I have tried them a couple of times and consider them the only acceptable way to eat standard marshmallows.
When I started going to farmers' markets however, I discovered that there were other kinds of marshmallows. There is a gourmet sweets stand at my local market and I have tried their pastel, fruit-flavoured, melt-in-your mouth marshmallows. Still not quite my thing but so much better than the usual. And when I started seeing marshmallow recipes on Foodgawker, I started bookmarking.
Today, I made Ribena marshmallows.
1) Ridiculously easy.
2) Boiling sugar syrup looks scary. This may be why I did not burn myself today.
3) Today's saucepan did not have a lip, so the thermometer could clip on. Excellent!
4) Slicing the marshmallows is a bit messy but it's quite easy as long as you keep cleaning the knife and use lots of icing sugar-cornstarch mix.
5) They are pretty and pastel and very sweet and soft. They're still not my favourite thing but I might try making other flavours.
6) Ribena! THE DRINK OF MY CHILDHOOD! I haven't had any in years but I opened the new syrup bottle (plastic now, not glass) and oh, it smells just the same. It's a nice flavour for the marshmallows but I think I still prefer it as a drink. This will require further testing. Ribena and soda water ...
*
The caramels remain incredibly delicious (especially with a sprinkle of sea salt) but cutting them up is tedious. More muscle power would help, I suspect. The marshmallows however were very easy and only a bit messy.
I am not a fan of supermarket marshmallows - sticky, gluey, all sugar (okay, faint flavouring) and you can't scrape them off your teeth. Toasted marshmallows were not a part of my (Aussie) childhood but I have tried them a couple of times and consider them the only acceptable way to eat standard marshmallows.
When I started going to farmers' markets however, I discovered that there were other kinds of marshmallows. There is a gourmet sweets stand at my local market and I have tried their pastel, fruit-flavoured, melt-in-your mouth marshmallows. Still not quite my thing but so much better than the usual. And when I started seeing marshmallow recipes on Foodgawker, I started bookmarking.
Today, I made Ribena marshmallows.
1) Ridiculously easy.
2) Boiling sugar syrup looks scary. This may be why I did not burn myself today.
3) Today's saucepan did not have a lip, so the thermometer could clip on. Excellent!
4) Slicing the marshmallows is a bit messy but it's quite easy as long as you keep cleaning the knife and use lots of icing sugar-cornstarch mix.
5) They are pretty and pastel and very sweet and soft. They're still not my favourite thing but I might try making other flavours.
6) Ribena! THE DRINK OF MY CHILDHOOD! I haven't had any in years but I opened the new syrup bottle (plastic now, not glass) and oh, it smells just the same. It's a nice flavour for the marshmallows but I think I still prefer it as a drink. This will require further testing. Ribena and soda water ...
How many times did I type 'marshmallow' in this post?
