Homemade Marshmallows

For one of our Easter Treats I made homemade marshmallows!  I know Easter has come and gone, but these are something you can do for any holiday.  You can add different flavored extracts to them, or food coloring, or use themed cookie cutters.

Not a very good picture.  This was all that was left of them!

I chose to do mine in the traditional vanilla flavoring and used mini Easter themed cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.  I then dipped them into milk chocolate. 

Ingredients: Gelatin, vanilla, light corn syrup, sugar, nonstick spray, chocolate (optional)



You can get the full recipe here.  Please read it for instructions.  I just wanted to share my tips while making these.

1. The Marshmallows set very fast.  Be prepared to work very quickly.  I felt like I was going at a fairly fast pace and mine were still bumpy. 

2.  Use a smaller pan.  When spreading your marshmallows onto the cookie sheet, I'd use a smaller size than recommended.  I didn't even get my marshmallows all spread out on the pan (because they dried too fast) and I felt they were too thin.  I'm almost wondering if two 8x8 pan would work best. 


3.  They need to dry 24 hours.  The recipe says you can cut them starting at about 3 hours, but I really feel they need to stay out overnight. 

4.  I didn't have any problems with coating them in chocolate.  I let mine sit in the pan for 24 hours before I cut them.  This probably helped them stand up to the hot chocolate. 

5.  Easy with the cooking spray.  This mostly applies to spraying your cookie cutters.  I felt like I kept putting too much spray on them (gross!). I finally ditched the cooking spray and just wiggled the cookie cutter back and forth and it worked just fine.


I really look forward to making these again.  This was the first time I have really done any candy making.  I definitely plan on making some peppermint flavored marshmallows for Christmas! 

If you like Marshmallows you might like these!