Make Your Own Marshmallows!

Marshmallows?? Marshmallows! You might be surprised how many times marshmallows have been featured on Steven Universe. So it's time for us to get with the program and add this to our recipes!

:fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire:

Now, it's easy to just go get marshmallows at the store and have a ball, but for me it's not so easy. Marshmallows, as Connie says, have animal products in them--not just animal by-products like dairy, but actual animal body parts, because collagen and other animal parts are used in gelatin. As a vegetarian, I don't like to eat gelatin, so there are a lot of snacks that are out for me. Including marshmallows.

Sounds like a great excuse to make my own. Here is an awesome recipe to make your own marshmallows from scratch! This is a no-bake recipe, but there is cooking on the stove, and it requires special equipment like a candy thermometer and a stand mixer, as well as some unusual ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup aquafaba (this is chickpea brine, the water from canned chickpeas)

• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum (guar gum can also work!)

• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/3 cup light corn syrup

• 1/4 cup water

• 2 teaspoons agar powder

• About 1 cup powdered sugar

• About 1 cup corn starch

Instructions:

There are three main sections of this recipe, with a fourth at the end when the marshmallows are done. I strongly recommend you don't try to do them at the same time. Multitasking with this recipe leads easily to burning stuff you don't wanna burn.

First, let's make the whip.

You pour the "water" out of the chickpea can and measure out half a cup, and add that to the bowl of your stand mixer with the small quantities of xanthan gum and lemon juice.

Turn it on a relatively low speed and beat. What happens is a really cool effect: the chickpea brine acts like egg whites in that it will whip into a white, frothy mixture that can hold its shape. This stuff is key to lots of vegan recipes. And it's awesome!

Whip this stuff for at least two minutes, and then add the vanilla extract to it and beat it until it's really stiff--I got it to the equivalent of soft peaks for egg whites before I stopped.

Part two: let's make the syrup.

This is the toughest part to get right and the most critical for monitoring! Affix your candy thermometer to a saucepan before you heat anything, and make sure it's positioned so the bottom of the thermometer will touch the liquid and you can see the measurements clearly.

Add in your 1/4 cup of water, your 1/3 cup of syrup, and your 1 cup of sugar. Stir it together. Then turn the burner on HIGH and wait for it to boil.

You will be heating this mix of ingredients to a :fire: very particular temperature :fire: , and as you may or may not know, temperatures are critical in candy-making. That's why they make special thermometers for it. And the temperature you want is just after soft-ball and before hard-ball; aim for 248° F / 120° C.

As soon as the ideal temperature hits, TURN OFF THE BURNER AND TAKE IT OFF THE HEAT. Now turn the mixer back on (if it was off) and pour the hot liquid slowwwwwly into the mix. You may see some deflating but it shouldn't become flat; it will fluff back up again and become very, very sticky.

You should beat this for at least another couple minutes--I recommend closer to five minutes. You may see some very interesting formations of the substance as it collects on the beaters!

Now the last bit: the gel.

Take 1/2 cup of water and put it in a little saucepan. Dissolve your agar-agar powder into it; you may want to stir it a bit and let it sit while you whip your other substance.

After it's nice and dissolved, you'll take it to the stove and boil it. Only boil it for one minute before you take it off the stove, turn off the heat, and begin to add that to your already beating marshmallow substance. The gel needs to be nice thick liquid as you pour it in.

Soon this stuff will get even stickier and stringier. You should whip and whip until it looks like it will hold its shape when you take the beaters out. It won't be 100% stiff, but it won't be flowing around. It's very sticky.

Now you have to make the dust!

Sift together your powdered sugar and cornstarch into a bowl. (Always sift when recipes say sift, especially when it comes to powdered sugar. It can be so lumpy! You don't want lumps!)

Take an 8 inch x 8 inch square pan (or 7 x 11 inch rectangular) and dust the pan with this sugar and cornstarch mix--only use about a third of it to dust the bottom of the pan, because you need the rest for later.

Now use a spatula to get the mix out of the mixing bowl and into this pan. Smooth the top and let it sit for around TWO HOURS to dry, just like that.

Make sure this mix is safe from where it could attract any ants, bugs, pets, or siblings! Do NOT put it in the fridge to dry. This will be bad for the consistency.

When it's dry, you are ready to work with it. Sprinkle some more cornstarch/sugar on the top of the dish.

Now, if you don't care about the shape of the marshmallows, you can just cut it into little square cubes, take them out and roll them around in the last third of the cornstarch/sugar mix to avoid stickiness.

But I decided to use an empty cookie decorating jar to get that classic cylindrical shape--for tradition's sake. (I did not have a small enough round cookie cutter, so this was the best I could do.)

If you're feeling creative, use cookie cutters to make other shapes! But that some of those angles can be tough to coat in the dust and they might become sticky. Cylinders are great for rolling.

After you've cut as many marshmallows as you can, be sure to just cut up the rest and roll those too. They're just as delicious even if they're not as pretty! These can be stored in an airtight container in a single layer after they've dried for 24 hours. I recommend letting them dry on a baking sheet.

Now we can play! There are several wonderful marshmallow appearances in Steven Universe. You can roast marshmallows the classic way like Connie and Steven did in "Winter Forecast":

Or you can bombard Peridot with marshmallows in the desert like Steven did in "Kindergarten Kid" to teach her a lesson about endless suffering:

Or you can even copy Amethyst's creative kebab from "It Could've Been Great," as long as you don't eat the stick like she did!

Marshmallows are so much fun and so versatile. You can even throw them in your hot chocolate if you want a treat. And they're vegan, so if you want to lick the bowl and the beaters when you're cleaning up, you can!

Just a note also about the chickpeas: Don't waste the peas just because you only needed the brine! If you don't have a recipe planned for them, like making pea soup or putting them on a salad or including them in your cooking, you can always do what I do: Roast them so they become a crunchy snack similar to peanuts! I swear this is yummy!

Bonus recipe:

What you do is strain and rinse the chickpeas and then use a clean dishtowel to pat them dry. Optionally, you can remove the skins; they won't hurt you whatsoever if you eat them and they taste fine, but taking the skins off helps them become crispier in the oven, so if you want, do it. Just squeeze them gently and the pea pops out of the skin. Spread them on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, and then bake in an oven at 350° F / 175° C for about 45 minutes.

Don't put any other seasoning on it except oil and salt. If you want to season with onion or garlic powder and chili powder or paprika or pepper or whatever afterwards, just do it when they come out of the oven, because seasoning can stop them from being able to cook up crispy.

They are a nice crunchy snack. It's better not to seal these in a container--try to leave them lidless and eat them within a couple days.

Enjoy the marshmallow madness! :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: