The new kitchen won’t entirely feel comfortable until I do some serious cooking in it. I don’t have a lot of time for that, what with being gone every weekend, but I can squeak a little in here and there. So when the local paper had a recipe for homemade marshmallows in the food section, something I’ve always wanted to try, I went for it.

I do make candy every year, so it wasn’t that foreign to me. The first part is a standard candy-making procedure, melting sugar on the stovetop. No pictures of this phase, as there’s no way to hold the pan, stir, and click without the tripod, which is in the mountains.

 

But once it hit the ideal temperature, into the mixer it went. Man, I love this mixer. It took half as long as the recipe said to fluff it up to the consistency of marshmallow fluff.

Then I spread it out into the pan, sprinkled with powdered sugar to keep it from sticking. I couldn’t keep the sugar up on the sides of the pan and I paid for it the next day, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.

I let it dry for almost 24 hours and then pried it out and cut it into squares. I dusted the edges with more powdered sugar and ziplocked them with lots more to keep them from sticking together too much.

I hauled them out around the campfire and we made S’mores with a couple. They are more tender and flavored a little more strongly than the commercial variety, but it’s not terribly different. They melt much better, but all in all, I spent an hour and several bucks on something that costs about $1.39 at the grocery store. It wasn’t about the price though; it was about having fun in my new kitchen. They certainly served that purpose.

I forgot to bring the leftovers home; we’ll see if they go stale as fast as storebought marshmallows.