Sunday, December 29, 2013

Advent - Week 4

This is gonna be a fast blog post - we just rolled back into town after a family weekend in La Crosse, WI to visit my sister and we still have to get the house clean in time for a New Year's party on Tuesday night!

With all of the excitement of Christmas, only three things got crossed off of our Advent list.

Brent helped the kids build a huge fort in our basement on Christmas Eve day:



Once they had the fort built, they made birthday cards for Jesus inside:




And the part I was most nervous for ended up being pretty easy - homemade marshmallows!  We followed this recipe exactly.

Basically, you bring water, sugar and corn syrup to a boil and let it get to 235 degrees.


While the sugars are cooking, you add the unflavored gelatin to some water in the mixing bowl and let it soak for a few minutes.



 Once the sugar reaches 235, you pour it into the gelatin mixture and slowly increase the mixer to a high speed.


As it whips, for 10 minutes, it gets white and fluffy.



It immediately gets poured into a greased pan to set up overnight.



This is the part I was most nervous for - I was afraid the marshmallow was not going to come out of the pan.  In preparation for it, I made up a little mixture of corn starch and powdered sugar.  I had read that it helps your knife not stick to the marshmallow and it prevents it from sticking to the cutting board.


Surprisingly, the marshmallow popped out pretty easily when I flipped the pan upside down and onto my cutting board.


I dipped our pizza cutter in the corn starch/powdered sugar mixture and sliced right through the marshmallow.  After I cut these long strips, I cut smaller pieces off of them to make them about the size of a large marshmallow.


After the small pieces were cut, we tossed them in the corn starch/powdered sugar mixture so they wouldn't stick together.




And that was it - they taste like marshmallows!  You can flavor them if you wish, so peppermint may be fun to try next year.  I was thinking that this summer, I would cut them a little larger to use on our S'mores - but other than hot chocolate and S'mores, I couldn't think of anything else you would use them for.  Maybe popcorn balls?  Any ideas?

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