Toffee covered marshmallows

[Trufflenaut]

Here's a fun little recipe I put together - it's a bit casual and unrefined, so I won't be at all offended if any experts jump in with improvements, but it's pretty easy to make, and makes a really tasty treat

 

Toffee covered Marshmallows:

1 lb. bag large marshmallows (large homemade marshmallows should also work - feel free to give it a try)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/2 stick butter (or 1/8 lb., for non-US people who wonder what the heck a stick of butter is)

A splash of water (yay for exact measurements!  )

 

Also needed: 4 or 5 skewers (preferably metal), and a reasonably heavy coffee mug

 

 

1. Remove the marshmallows from the bag, separate them, and put them in a plastic bag or other suitable container in the freezer.  It's OK if they are touching in the bag, but make sure they're not squished together.

2. After a few hours, add the rest of the ingredients to a saucepan (use just enough water to wet the sugar so it doesn't burn as easily) and cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally.

3. Cook the mixture until it just starts to turn brown - if you have a candy thermometer, this will be around 290F/143.333C.  If you don't have a candy thermometer, just occasionally put a drop of the mixture on a white plate to check the color (then put "candy thermometer" on your shopping list, because candy thermometers are awesome)

4. Once it starts to just barely (but definitely) start to turn brown, take the pan off the heat, turn the stove burner down to very low heat, and put the pan back on (you want just enough heat to keep the mixture from cooling too much, but not so much heat that it continues cooking) - this is the toffee that you will dip the marshmallows into

5. Take the bag of marshmallows out of the freezer, stick a marshmallow on the end of a skewer, and dip it into the toffee.  You must dip it quickly, so that the marshmallow doesn't melt, and also try to avoid dipping it in far enough that the toffee gets on the skewer (toffee on the skewer makes it really hard to remove the marshmallow cleanly)

6. Find someplace to stick the skewer while the toffee cools (this only takes a minute or so, but the toffee will stick to anything it touches until then, and it will probably drip until it cools).  My recommendation is to put the aforementioned coffee mug on a plate (to catch drips), and place the end of the skewer in the coffee mug (see photo below) to hold it.

7. Once you've dipped the fourth or fifth marshmallow, the toffee on the first one you've dipped should be hard, and you can use a fork to ease it off the skewer so you can dip another marshmallow

8. Continue dipping marshmallows until you run out of marshmallows or toffee, or get tired of trying to keep them from sticking to each other in the coffee mug.

 

 

Notes:

-The heat from the toffee mixture slightly cooks the marshmallow, so you'll end up with a slight campfire-marshmallow flavor once you get through the thin candy shell - it's really quite tasty!

-The toffee should drip off in long thin drips like in the photo (these easily snap off once the toffee cools.  If you are instead getting thick oozing drips that make it look like the marshmallow is trying out for the part of "elephant" in the school play, you are dipping the marshmallows in the toffee for too long and they're melting - dip quicker

-keep the marshmallows at least one inch apart in the coffee mug - if they make the slightest contact with each other, they'll stick permanently (and they make this really cool marshmallow-toffee bridge when you try to pull them apart).  This will happen at least once in the process - just consider them samples for quality-control purposes

-For those who are afraid of boiled sugar recipes, try this one out - just take your time and be very careful not to drip any toffee on yourself, and you should do fine.  Feel free to message me if you have any concerns - I'm happy to help people get into candymaking

-The toffee shell is quite happy to suck up any humidity in the air, so once they're made, they need to be eaten within a few hours or they start getting sticky on the outside - this is either a good point or a bad point

 

Enjoy!

 

[Kerry Beal]

Only improvement I can see would be to dip them in chocolate!

[JeanneCake]

or sprinkle something on them - like cookie crumbs, chopped heath bar..... you definitely will need a helper for this!  And what if you were to put the ends of the skewers into a block of styrofoam covered with waxed paper to catch the drips, so long as your skewers are straight at the ends and not decorative?

[Trufflenaut]

The styrofoam block idea might work, though it would have to be a fairly large block and/or clamped down to the table, or else it would topple over too easily