Homemade Strawberry and Lemon Marshmallows

I had so much fun making these!  To Read More, Click On The Recipe Title.


 Ingrid from 3 B's....Baseball,Baking & Books made marshmallows, they looked so good that it made me want to make them. I wanted to make them flavored , I started googling flavored marshmallows and reading up on how I could do it. The flavors I chose were strawberry and lemon but you can make these just about any flavor you want! It's EASY and it doesn't take long to make them at all! I used a recipe from About.com for the strawberry marshmallows and then adapted it for the lemon marshmallows. I used frozen strawberries , and added 1 1/2 tsps of strawberry extract to give it more of a strawberry flavor then added a couple drops of red food coloring to give it a stronger pink color. For the lemon marshmallows I used 1/2 cup of lemon juice and 1 1/2 tsps of lemon extract with some yellow food coloring for color. I took pictures so lets get started.

The recipe says to cook the frozen strawberries for about 10 minutes then puree them in the food processor, I ran them through a strainer to get the seeds.



The first thing the recipe says to do with the puree is to put it into the bowl of your mixer with the water and gelatin and let it sit so the gelatin can bloom., I learned with the first batch of strawberry marshmallows that it's better to wait till the syrup that you make is almost done before you do this. The gelatin clumped up on me and I freaked! But it all melted when the hot syrup was added.




I started my syrup, adding 3/4 cup of water,corn syrup and the sugar to a heavy medium sauce pan. I stirred it first until the sugar was desolved and I didn't feel it on the bottom of the pan, ( at this stage the mixture will be white) then I put the candy thermometer on the pan and let it come to a boil, don't stir this AT ALL. Let it come to a soft ball stage 240 degrees on the thermometer. If you have a 3 cup pyrex measuring cup, get it now, it makes pouring this into the mixer bowl alot easier, if not just pour it from the pan, but be very careful the mixture is HOT! When your thermometer reads about 200 degrees ,put the strawberry puree or whatever fruit your using into the mixer bowl and add the water and gelatin. The gelatin only needs 5 minutes to bloom. This is also the time I added the extract.




When the gelatin blooms it'll look like this.

When the syrup gets to 240 degrees on the thermometer take it of the heat, either pour it into the large measuring cup or take the pan to the mixer bowl and slowly pour the syrup into the bowl with the mixer on low. Try to pour the syrup down the side of the mixer bowl, the large measuring cup makes this easy, place the spout of the cup on the bowl and just pour down. Gradually take the speed of the mixer up to high, remember the liquid is hot and you don't want any splashing. Let the mixer on high for about 10 minutes.



When the mixture turned into marshmallow fluff I added the food coloring to make it the color I wanted.




You'll know it's done when you lift the beaters up and the mixture falls slowly back into the bowl.






Pour the fluff into a 13x9 inch pan that is lined with foil, spray the foil with a baking spray. Smooth out the fluff with a wet spatula. The fluff has to sit for 8 to 10 hours or overnight. I let it sit overnight.




The next day it was time to cut the marshmallow, the recipe says to sift equal amounts of powdered sugar and cornstarch together, sift the mixture over the top of your marshmallows in the pan, be very generous with it. flip the pan over onto your cutting board and peel the foil off of the marshmallows. Coat the bottom of the marshmallows with the sugar mixture. Use a knife or pizza cutter and start cutting the marshmallows the size you want. What ever you use to cut the marshmallows will get sticky, I just kept putting pwdered sugar on the knife and kept cutting.





make sure to coat all cut sides of the marshmallows with the powdered sugar mixture so they aren't sticky.

I decided to coat some of my marshmallows in chocolate. I used bags of chocolate chips melted with a couple tablespoons of shortening to coat them.




Chocolate for the strawberry marshmallows.






White chocolate for the lemon marshmallows.



Everybody loved these! I 'm not going to wait till next Christmas to make these again! There are so many times during the year that you could make marshmallows and use them. Homemade marshmallows can be used in any recipe that calls for marshmallows. Make a batch of white marshmallows and let your imagination fly!



Valentines Day...after the marshmallow is made, put it into a foil lined cookie sheet to make the marshmallows thin and use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out the marshmallows , then coat them in chocolate.



St. Patricks Day... Flavor them with mint, tint them green and coat them in chocolate.



Easter...Make your own chocolate covered peeps with cookie cutters!



If you drink alot of hot cocoa , use the cookie cutters to make different shapes of marshmallows to put on top of the hot cocoa, the kids would love this!