Homemade marshmallows are ridiculously easy to make, cut and taste the same as commercial ones, and offer the option of being as big as your mold and imagination permit them to be. The trick to this is to use the minimal amount of utensils, as you don't want to introduce impurities that sugar crystals can form around. Ever eaten grainy marshmallows? You don't want to.

Ingredients:
1kg sugar
3tbs(20g) beef gelatine
1/4tsp cream of tartar
1tsp vanilla essence
pinch of salt
water
cornflour
icing sugar
butter/vegetable oil

Equipment:
an electric beater (good luck doing this by hand!)
jam thermometer
two pots
a bowl

Instructions:

Mix 1:1 cornflour:icing sugar, grease up a tin or a baking dish and dust with the aforementioned mix. (Trust me, you want to do this before your marshmallow mix starts cooling.)

Add the gelatine and 120ml of water into a big bowl. Go away. Make the syrup.


Syrup:
400g sugar
180ml water
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
pinch of salt

Combine 400g sugar, 180ml water, 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and a pinch of salt in a pot, heat and swirl until completely dissolved. To check, look at the reflection of light through the syrup on the inner-side of the pot. Your eye will easily see any imperfections in the reflected light in a stainless-steel pot.


Take 160ml of this syrup, 400g of sugar and 60ml of water and combine in another pot, swirling and heating up to 120c (approx. 3min past boiling, but a thermometer would be better). We are essentially creating a super-saturated sugar syrup, which will at the slightest provocation return to crystals given half the chance.

Now add this super-syrup to your large bowl with the gelatine and beat for 5min. Add food colouring if you so desire, the vanilla essence, and pour into your mold. Leave to set, and enjoy in whatever manner you wish. They are as easy to cut as any normal marshmallow, simply roll them in the flour:sugar fairy dust from earlier to take care of those sticky edges.

Baking is science for hungry people.

The imperial system can blow me. Cooking Conversion Table.