Cookies and Cream Marshmallow by High Tea With Dragons

Hi everyone!  It’s Kirsten from High Tea with Dragons here - I’m beyond honoured to be guest posting on Baking Makes Things Better today!

Marshmallow is one of my absolute favourite treats to make and once you get the hang of it, is unbelievably easy too!  If you haven’t tried making marshmallow before then you’re missing out - homemade marshmallow is totally different from its store-bought cousin; it’s super soft, packed with flavour and melts away in your mouth.

This recipe for cookies and cream marshmallow is perfect for beginners – the flavours come from a little bit of vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence) and crushed Oreo cookies, not additional sugar syrups like some more complicated marshmallows.  This marshmallow is absolutely delicious – the crushed Oreos are a crunchy surprise when you bite in, perfectly balanced by the smooth vanilla marshmallow.  I’m sure you’ll love it – enjoy!

Note: While the mixture itself takes around 30 minutes to prepare, keep in mind that marshmallow needs to set for 24 hours before you slice and dust it.

Ingredients:
500g sugar
4 teaspoons glucose syrup
2 tablespoons gelatine powder
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
¾ cup Oreo cookies, crushed
½ cup icing sugar (to dust)
½ cup corn flour (to dust)

Method:
Grease and line a rectangular tray with baking paper.  Lightly spray top of baking paper with non-stick spray.
Place 200ml of water in a bowl and sprinkle with gelatine.  Set aside.
Place sugar, glucose and 200ml of water in a large saucepan.  Place on low heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.
Increase heat to medium-high and insert sugar thermometer.  Boil for 3-5 minutes until the mixture reaches 120°C.  Remove from heat and carefully add gelatine mixture.  Whisk until gelatine dissolves and no lumps remain.
Place egg whites in a large bowl and beat with a whisk attachment on high until foamy. Gradually add hot sugar syrup while mixing.  Continue to beat on high until white and glossy – about 5 min with stand mixer, 10 with hand mixer. Fold vanilla bean paste/vanilla essence through mixture.
Add crushed Oreos and gently fold through mixture until evenly spread.  Pour into prepared pan and allow to set for 24 hours.
In a small bowl, sift together icing sugar and corn flour. Dust large knife with icing sugar mixture and slice marshmallow into squares.
Roll each square in icing sugar mixture, ensuring all sides are coated, and place on cooling rack. Leave to dry for at least 3 hours. Store in an airtight container.

*For more amazing recipes, check out Kirsten’s blog High Tea With Dragons.  We love it.  Thanks for sharing this recipe with us Kirsten!  -Melissa and Courtenay xx.

Chocolate + Vanilla Marshmallows

These are a little tricky to make, but only because you have to use glucose syrup and that stuff is super sticky!  You also need a candy thermometer.  I made chocolate and vanilla marshmallows; the recipe below makes one batch of your chosen flavour. 

My Vanilla Marshmallows turned out the best.  They were light and fluffy, and oh so dainty.  While mixing the chocolate ones I got excited about an email I received and decided to call Courtenay to share the news.  I turned the mixer off because it was a bit too loud while I was on the phone and when I get back to mixing the chocolate batch the mix had gone a bit thick and I forgot how long they still had left to be mixed.  So, I’m not sure if I over or under mixed them, but they had trouble holding their shape.  They tasted good, they just didn’t look appealing.

Icing sugar, for dusting tin
4 teaspoons powdered gelatin
1 ½ cups sugar
100ml glucose syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted (if making chocolate marshmallows)
Extra icing sugar and cocoa powder for dusting

Grease a 20 x 20cm tin.  Dust the inside of the tin with icing sugar (combined with a little bit of cocoa powder if making chocolate marshmallows), coating the the tin thoroughly.  Set aside.

Place the gelatine in a mixing bowl with 80ml of water.  Allow to stand for 10 minutes.

Add the sugar, glucose syrup, and 80ml water to a small saucepan.  Stir over a medium heat until the sugar and syrup has dissolved.  Bring to boil until it reaches 125°C on a candy thermometer.  Remove from the heat.

With mixer on medium speed, carefully stream the hot syrup into the gelatin.  Once the mixture has become pale / white and increased slightly in volume, increase the speed to high  and add vanilla.  Continue to mix for 8 minutes.  Be careful not to over mix as this can result in a tough marshmallow (well, tough for a marshmallow).

If you are making chocolate marshmallows, add the cocoa powder to the mixture and when incorporated, turn mixer back up to high speed and mix for a few more seconds.

Pour into prepared tin and smooth out with spatula (hot water will stop this from sticking).  Cover with cling film and put in the fridge to set, preferably overnight.

Dust a bench with icing sugar (mixed with a little bit of cocoa powder if making chocolate marshmallows) and turn the marshmallow mixture out.  Transfer onto a chopping board and cut into squares (I used a hot wet knife).  Place some icing sugar (mixed cocoa powder if needed) in medium bowl.  Put the marshmallow squares into the bowl and coat the sides with the icing sugar.  Shake off the excess icing sugar.  Store in airtight container.

Marshmallow brownie cupcakes

One of the blogs I follow, Cream Puffs in Venice, has a weekly feature called Magazine Mondays.  Basically the blog author makes something from a magazine so that she hasn’t purchased them for nothing.  This makes me feel a little bad.  I buy A LOT of magazines.  And about 3 – 4 of my monthly magazine purchases are foodie ones.  And I never end up making anything from them.  This changed has hopefully now changed and I would like to thank Ivonne from Cream Puffs for motivating me.  Also, last weeks Magazine Monday post was hosted on ReTorte, which is another fab food blog that you should check out :)

I made the ‘marshmallow-topped brownie cupcakes’ from the Oct/Nov 2010 issue of Donna Hay magazine.  They were beautiful.  The marshmallow was so sweet and delicious and the brownie base was intensely chocolate.  I will be making these again.


Makes 12

50g dark chocolate, chopped (after my experience in Melbourne I used Lindt.)
60g butter, chopped
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon cocoa
¼ cup plain flour, sifted
¼ teaspoon baking powder

Marshmallow topping:
1 cup water
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon gelatine powder
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
pink food colouring

Preheat the oven to 160˚C.  Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until smooth.  Allow to cool slightly.  Place the sugar, egg, cocoa, flour, baking powder and chocolate mixture in a bowl and stir until well combined.  Spoon into 12 x ½ cup capacity muffin tins lined with paper cases and bake for 12 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.  Allow to cool completely.

For the marshmallow topping: place the water, sugar, gelatine and vanilla in a saucepan over a high heat, bring to the boil and simmer for  3-4 minutes.  Allow to cool completely.  Place the cooled mixture and a few drops of pink food colouring into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat from 10 minutes until thick and fluffy.  Spoon the mixture over the brownies and refrigerate for 1 hour or until set. 


Donna Hay topped her cupcakes with ½ cup of toasted desiccated coconut.  I used pink sparkly sugar crystals.  Also, my cupcakes are flat on the top – in the magazine the cupcake that has been given a close up peaks up in the middle like a proper cupcake.  I reckon Donna Hay has poured a little bit of the marshmallow mixture on the brownie, let it set, added to it, let it set, added to it… as it kind of looks layered.  Meh.

Rocky Road Muffins

I made these last Thursday (treats for the long weekend) along with White chocolate macadamia nut muffins (which I will also write a post about) and some more pecan shortbread (yep, I was a busy little baker).

I found these to taste more like massive lollies than muffins – they aren't very light and fluffy.  Still yum though.

Makes about 12.

¼ cup milk
1 egg
1 cup natural yoghurt
50g butter, melted (I put this in softened, not melted because I wasn’t paying attention, so perhaps this is why muffins were more lolly-like than cake-like)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup sugar
½ cup small marshmallows
½ cup roughly chopped chocolate (I used Nestlé bits)
½ cup peanuts
½ cup jubes (I used a pack of The Natural Confectionary company’s snake lollies, and cut up the pink and purple ones for the muffins)

Mix milk, yoghurt, egg and butter together.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix until just combined.
Spoon into well-greased muffin pans or cases and bake at 180˚C for 12-15 minutes.


For icing: Heat 1 tablespoon of cocoa, butter and milk together with icing sugar to form a paste.

The cases I used came from the ‘1,2,3 + GST’ shop in Auckland City, next to Borders.  While I don’t think they are that pretty from the outside, they are kinda cool because the inside is shiny so the muffins don’t stick to the casing.