Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Marshmallow Experiment

RAY WHAT DID YOU DO?
Marshmallows how I love you! So soft, fluffy and just melt in my mouth! I could probably go through a half of a bag of them on their own. This was a challenge to see if I could make them on my myself. There is only a handful of ingredients that go into a Marshmallow and it mostly consists of sugar... both corn syrup or granulated sugar the other main ingredient is gelatin and lots of it. If I was a less ambitious person I would have made a half of a batch instead the recipe took 4 packets of gelatin and a cup of corn syrup.
I've made a marshmallow frosting for the smore cupcakes and its a similar process. Heat the sugar to a molten 244 degrees then combine it with the gelatin then whisk it until it is crazy fluffy. I did enjoy trying to figure out how to transfer the marshmallow out of the bowl and into a 8 by 12 glass pan without it sticking to everything. I failed miserably. It stuck to my hands and to the rubber scrapers and also to the sides of the bowl the only thing it didn't stick to was the glass pan because it was covered with powdered sugar. Then it has to sit out over night to dry. There wasn't an approximate time with how long this happen but i figured a good 12 hours.


The fun part is when its all ready to go you can break out your fun cookie cutters and go to town. I posses a few round cookie cutters for your basic marshmallow shape but then I also own a Squirrel cookie cutter (don't ask why i just do) and I made some fun squirrel marshmallows.
They turned out pretty good and i have a whole bag of marshmallows to myself. Nom nom nom. I can totally see why people can charge what they do for gormet marshmallows its not as easy as it might seem. If I do this again I will add different flavoring to them maybe rasperry or orange extract to make them more exciting!


SQUIRREL!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Banana cupcakes

These Cupcakes are Bananas B-A-N-A-N-A-S
These are Roasted Banana Cupcakes from the Martha Stewart cupcakes book. Couple of things about roasting bananas is interesting... I'm not found of their texture after they are roasted and then trying to extract them out of their peels. I've decided that I need to invest in another Kitchen Aid Mixing bowl because you have to beat the egg whites separate from the actual batter, which I'm sure gave them the light and fluffy texture of the cake. I'm sure it would have been easier if I had a separate bowl and wasn't transferring batter to another bowl while whipping the egg whites. The recipe only makes 16 regular cupcakes so to have more to try & distribute I made allot of minis and took some to Classic Studios when I got my hair cut. They seemed to enjoy them very much.




The frosting is a honey cinnamon butter cream quite tasty! Of course I added more cinnamon because 1/4 teaspoon doesn't seem like all that much to me. The cake is a whole lotta banana flavor and the frosting is a sweet accent. If I can get past the preparation of the bananas I'd make it whenever I have extra ripe bananas.