Home › Candy › Dipped Marshmallows
Dipped Marshmallows
2 cups sugar. 1 cup milk.
One cup of caramel sugar poured into milk and sugar while boiling; when nearly done put in one tablespoon of butter. Let cook until it forms a soft ball; take from fire and beat until cool. Dip marshmallows with a fork and put on oil paper.
A fudge-style caramel coating for ready-made marshmallows. The instructions assume you already know how to read sugar by feel, so the numbers below are the missing part.
- The hinge: dip fastBeating a milk-and-sugar syrup as it cools sets up crystals, which is what makes it opaque and fudge-like rather than glossy. It will stiffen from spreadable to unworkable in a couple of minutes, so have the marshmallows and paper laid out before you take the pan off the heat, and stop beating while the mixture still falls thickly from the fork.
- "Caramel sugar""Caramel sugar" most likely means sugar melted dry in a pan and cooked to a deep amber, then stirred into the boiling milk and sugar. It will hiss and seize; keep stirring over heat until it dissolves back in.
- Soft ball234-240F on a thermometer. Expect 12 to 20 minutes of boiling depending on your pan; a wide pan gets there faster.
- ScorchingMilk and sugar at that temperature catch easily. Use a heavy-bottomed pan of at least 2 quarts, since the mixture climbs when it boils, and stir the bottom rather than the surface.
- Oil paperParchment is the modern equivalent. Waxed paper works but the coating can weld to it as it cools; parchment releases cleanly.
- MarshmallowsStandard supermarket marshmallows will serve, though the recipe says nothing about what kind was intended. Dust off any excess cornstarch coating first to help the caramel adhere.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities make enough coating for several dozen standard marshmallows. Any surplus can be poured into a buttered pan and cut as fudge.
- If it sets too soonReturn the pan to low heat with a spoonful of milk or cream and stir smooth. Repeated reheating will eventually leave the sugar grainy.
Mrs. Wilson's book dates from around 1920, by which time marshmallows had made the shift from apothecary confection to grocery staple. The name goes back to Althaea officinalis, the marsh mallow, whose mucilaginous root was once whipped with sugar and egg white into a soothing paste for sore throats; by the late nineteenth century gelatin had largely replaced the root and the candies were sold ready-made by the pound. The recipe never tells you how to make a marshmallow, apparently assuming a box on the shelf and treating the confection as a raw ingredient, in the same spirit as the era's fashion for dipped and stuffed dates, walnuts and figs. The coating itself is closer to a penuche or caramel fudge than to a clear dipping caramel.