They Are Like Square Clouds :D

You're a terribly quiet bunch, you know. I'm always puzzling over what to write, what percentage of people like what kinds of posts, if a post went well or unread, what lengths are good...or if you all gave up three weeks ago... While the comments ghost in and out, I have three official followers and some additional unknown quantity that I've given up trying to estimate. After seeding links to family, friends, and all over facebook, I tend to get comments in passing: "You didn't really break into that old lady's house..." or "By the way, Barbara said she couldn't see that picture of you in the last post," so I know you're out there.

Mysterious lot, you. That comment button's not going to click itself, you know.

Today was one of those comfortably productive weekend days; I read half a chapter of blisteringly mathematical Macroeconomia, then antidoted with a chapter of Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofica (I am beginning to suspect how it may end!). In the time that that reading took me, I drank about six cups of tea--funny story, that--I'd been wondering why my tea has been tasting like throw-up (yes, really), and being accustomed to consuming my weight in tea once or twice a day at home, I just couldn't do without it any longer. I thought perhaps it was the type of tea (I had hibiscus, which was new to me), and bought some new flavours (Peach+Passionfruit, and Blackcurrant+Vanilla, oooooh, baby). It was better, but it wasn't until after I exchanged the hard water for store-bought bottled water that it suddenly tasted marvelous. I also bought a brick of espresso (dude, try it in brick form) and have been terribly pleased with myself over it.

"Hrowr? Wassat?" (Dark is momentarily distracted by shinies.)

At the moment, the cat is twining himself around my chair legs and making perturbed little throaty noises, which generally means Booored! D: Puh-lease cuddle!? The lights are on in the windows facing my window, and perhaps the man on the third floor has gone out onto the balcony for another smoke break, one arm draped lazily over the railing. The evening is dark and cold with a clear sky. I am resisting the urge to make another cup of tea because I am running out of nice water. The apartment is quiet, but some delectable foody smell has threaded its way down the hallway into my room. 

Life is good.

At the moment, I'm typing on a borrowed laptop, because mine has packed up and told me it never loved me in the first place, that it's taking back the engagement ring, and not to call it in the morning because it never wants to hear my voice again. Or rather, the laptop itself is fine, but the AC adapter cord, which has been getting more and more chewed up and frazzled as the years went on, has finally lost the will to transmit a current strong enough to turn my laptop on. Really. I plug it in, the battery light flickers on, stays on for a minute, and then the cord has an existential crisis and changes its mind. It is in control of its own destiny, darn it, and that does not include me and my silly old files.

Just wait until I throw you in the rubbish!

Thank goodness for Amazon and two-day shipping. Now, if I can just outwit the Italian postage system, it should get from New York to Bologna in under fifteen weeks.... (You laugh, but yesterday Italy decided that everyone should have a strike, you know, just for a lark. My classes were cancelled, the buses stopped running, and Bianca said her ticket to Ireland may or may not be valid if the airport staff strike extends to her flight--in which case she would not be reimbursed, because "it's a situation beyond their control.")

Well then. I cooked something! Want to see!?? It's the only thing I currently have pictures of, other than a few random ones I took before my Compaq died. BCSP held an exchange party where the BCSP students meet the Italian students going to study in America, and we were supposed to bring 'traditional American dishes.'

I made Almondy, Vanilla-ey Marshmallows for S'mores...

While I have seen marshmallows for sale here, they tend to be dry and stiff rather than pillowy soft, and just are not very worth your money next to all the pastries you can buy instead. Although I would have loved to make something hot and full of lamb meat to represent the NZ cuisine, 1) everyone hates lamb for NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and 2) I could not bring anything of the sort for a 20-minute bus ride. Plus, I had made marshmallows before. 

For whatever reason, American souls are profoundly disturbed by the fact that marshmallows can be magicked out of a home kitchen, and you get comments like Yay marshmallows oh wait you MADE them that's like impossible man D: ...I promise, not that hard. Marshmallows are basically just sugar that's had the crap beaten out of it.

My original recipe is Gourmet Magazine's version, but one of the ingredients is powdered gelatin, which I could not find. Instead, I used this UK recipe that calls for gelatin leaves (more on that later...). I find that Gourmet's recipe overall works better, with a smoother texture and a marshmallow that holds its shape very well, although since the UK one uses more egg whites than corn syrup, it has a richer flavour and a melt-away effect in your mouth that is really quite nice. :) If you're planning to toast them, the Gourmet version will most likely hold up better.

Here you can see the texture difference on the inside. With egg whites, you get a bubbly, softer interior, while recipes without eggs are more uniform throughout and have cleaner edges when you cut them, more like a commerical marshmallow.

I was going to post just the compressed version with the final product, but since so many people asked for the recipe, I'll go through it a bit more in-depth. My notes and pictures come first, and the recipe is collected together at the end to make it easier to read.

It is best to make marshmallows on a dry day...

(Well, that didn't work out.) This is the Fountain of Neptune in the middle of the city, covered in four inches snow that continued to fall all day. At least Neptune has that white fur hat to keep him warm OH WAIT NO THAT'S SNOW TOO. 

Hey Neptune, what were you the god of, again? Was it freaking awful weather, or Siberia?

"Neptune, my toes are cold..." 

"Shut up and hold your water spout without complaining." 

"But it's cold!"

"Boy, if I hear one more word out of you, I'm going to kick you into the water."

So for the marshmallows, there are a few ingredients you may not have on hand, like corn syrup:

This is what light corn syrup looks like, and it was a pain to buy. I saw it in a random grocery store and thought "Oh, that's a nice thing for grocery stores to carry...must remember to pick up some for my marshmallows." Well, apparently Scaramigli, the store I was in, is one of the oldest grocery and wine stores in Bologna and carries all sorts of weird things that no one else carries, so I had to track it down again. It's lovely stuff, though. Almost flavourless except for its sweetness, it's veeeery sticky and viscous. See how it holds its shape even in the bottom of the pot?

All marshmallow recipes require corn syrup, either in one large quantity or in a small quantity supported by egg whites, as in this recipe. It helps the marshmallows keep their shape.

The other ingredient of note is gelatine. Again, I haven't tried it with powdered gelatine in this recipe, but the Gourmet.com recipe uses it with great success. Italy is weird about powdered gelatine... For the first batch I bought a packet of Tortagel, which looked like normal gelatine, but when I poured it into the water it turned out to be tapioca powder. Great. Turns out gelatine in Italy is sold as colla di pesce. Fish collagen. Like I could have figured that one out. Really, people.

Left: incorrect. Right: correct. They are double-size gelatine sheets. They also look suspiciously like fish scales.

So the night before the party I was left without the ingredients. And being the tremendously generous and understanding human being that he is, Mauro (Luca's dad) volunteered to drive me out to the Coop supermarket so that I could buy my stupid fish collagen. YOU'RE SUCH KIND PEOPLE. I DON'T DESERVE YOU. D: <3

And after all that, I wrecked my first batch. Now listen up, chickies. You need to watch your sugar carefully, or this will happen:

This is called caramelisation. It is the last stage before the sugar goes ballistic and ignites. It happens between 320 and 350°F. This is slightly higher than the 255°F that I was aiming for. Now, I don't know how I managed to get fifty degrees above what I was watching for, but my thermometer read 230ish and wasn't touching the bottom of the pan. In my second try, I let the thermometer touch the bottom of the pan and got much more accurate results.

Well, when life hands you lemons (or the incorrect sugar temperature), make lemonade. Or crazy sugar scultpures.

I'm still eating these. :3 How awesome do they look!? This little guy is my favourite:

I served my marshmallows as part of s'mores, the quintessential American campground food. Instead of graham crackers, I put out thin biscuits, and replaced the dread Hersheys bar with a jar of Nutella, which works wonderfully to stick the s'more together. The Italians polished off a pound and a half of them, and I was so proud. Among the comments I got:

"It tastes like home...not like plastic."

"Whoa!...(munches a bit more)...whoooaa..."

"This is what clouds are made of."

"They're acceptably edible."

(Luca's comment. This was actually my favourite, because Luca doesn't give compliments ever. :P)

If you've never had homemade marshmallows, you've never had real marshmallows at all. And everyone loves you for it. Including Adele--I don't think she'd ever seen them before. She asked me how I made them and seemed baffled by what I told her. "And what are they called again?" she asked me. "Maffi?" I said it several times for her.Later, I heard her walking down the hallway, muttering the word to herself.

"Mash...mash-millyoos."

I think I need to enunciate better. ^^

Almond-Vanilla Marshmallows

Ingredients:

Sugar                                  - 450g or 2 1/3 cups

Light corn syrup                  - 1 heaping tablespoon

(also called liquid glucose)

Water                                 - 200mL + 140mL

Gelatine                              - 9 sheets**

Eggs                                   - 2 large, yolks discarded

Powdered sugar and cornstarch sifted together, enough to coat sticky edges.

As for flavourings: however much of whatever you like, really. I used vanilla and almond extract, but you can also substitute liqueur for some of the water, if you like. I'm desperate to try Baileys. ;D You can also add food colouring at your discretion, although the pillowy white look really has nothing to be improved upon.

**Gelatine is not sold in powder form in Italy, only in sheets. If you can't find sheets in the U.S., Google says to use 3tsp or a 10g packet of powdered gelatine instead.

You will also need:

Baking pan

Stand mixer with whisk attachment (preferable) or handheld mixer

Heavy-based pot

Candy thermometer - BCSP students, you can borrow mine. ^^

...And, depending on the mess, you'll need between one and fifty cans of Pam. ;D

Method:

1. Put the gelatine sheets or gelatine powder in 140mL cold water and let them soak.

2. Add 200mL water, corn syrup, and sugar to the pan (it'll be pearly and grainy looking). Mix on low heat until dissolved. Then crank up the heat to high so that the mixture reaches the boil, stick in the thermometer, and let 'er rip all the way to 255°F or 125° C (it will take at least 10 minutes). It will bubble and look scary, but resist the urge to stir it.

3. While the sugar is boiling, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks in the bowl of the mixer (I was using a handheld mixer and just used a large bowl).

4. When the mixture reaches 125°C, the sugar will be at the "firm ball stage" (you can roll it into a ball when you drop a spoonful into water). Remove it from the heat and add the gelatine together with the water it soaked in, and stir until melted (sheets) or dissolved (powder). It will bubble and thicken slightly.

The firm-ball stage. I checked just to make sure.

A word of caution: the hotter sugar is, the more unfriendly it becomes, and that includes cleaning as well as skin contact. Do not splatter, and immediately run any burns under cold water before trying to wipe the sugar off.

5. Add the hot syrup/gelatine mixture to the egg whites in a very thin stream with the mixer on medium speed. You may have an easier time doing this if you transfer the syrup to a bowl or jug with a spout.

6. When all the syrup is added, the mixture will get shiny and thick. Add any extract flavourings or food colourings at this point and continue to beat for 10 minutes. Here is what your mixture will do:

Thick...

Thicker...

We have lift-off! 8D

At the end of 10 minutes, it will hold a ribbon-shape on top of itself:

7. Generously grease a baking pan large enough to hold the mixture, and pour it in, smoothing the top with a greased spatula. Leave at room temperature to set, at least four hours and preferable overnight.

8. Turn out the finished slab onto a cutting board covered generously with sifted powdered sugar and cornstarch, and cut into squares with a sharp, well greased knife. Coat with powdered sugar and cornstarch on all sides.

This stuff is awesome to work with.

9. Toast, if you like, and enjoy!