Hot cocoa without marshmallows? Now that's just not right!
In these cold weather months, hot cocoa is a staple for us. As we started filling our cups with store bought marshmallows, we thought, why not make our own. Its always fun and interesting to see what actually goes into something that you are eating and we really liked the idea of making them different shapes. I mean you might as well have cute marshmallows in that cute mug, right?
Candy thermometer
3 packets unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
2 Tablespoons vanilla extract (or other flavoring syrup)
powdered sugar for coating
Grease the pan of your choice. (We used a cookie sheet with edges because we wanted thinner marshmallows, but 9x13 is perfect for thicker ones)
In a large bowl, mix half of your water (3/4 cup) and all three packets of unflavored gelatin. Cover and sit it to the side.
Combine the remainder of your water (3/4 cup), 3/4 cup of your corn syrup, and the sugar into a pan and turn your burner to medium heat. Whisk together. The sugar needs to dissolve and the mixture needs to come to a rolling boil. Let this mixture get to 240 degrees (F).
Once it has reached 240 degrees (F), mix in the remaining 1/4 cup of corn syrup.
While mixing on medium speed, begin adding your boiling mixture to your gelatin at a slow and steady pace. Once all of it is combined, mix on medium for about 10 minutes. Or until the ingredients have stiffened and tripled in volume.
Pour the mixture into your greased pan and try to smooth out as much as possible. Let these sit for 8 to 10 hours. We just made them before we went to bed and they were ready to go when we needed them in the morning.
Cover an area of your counter with powdered sugar. Flip over your pan to release your marshmallow. Then cut your marshmallow into your desired shapes, coat with powdered sugar to keep them from being sticky, and you are good to go. Random side-note: We used star and bell shaped cookie cutters to make our mallow shapes. That left us with quite a bit of leftovers that we ended up just cutting into small pieces that are about the size of the small store bought ones.
Place your marshmallows in a air-tight container and they can keep for about three weeks.
We love how the marshmallows turned out and how they looked in our hot cocoa! This is a super fun project to do for the holidays and is a huge hit with little ones. Have fun making mallows! xoxo, Britt + Sky
