I had wanted to make marshmallows for a while, and then just when I was getting the time to make it, the July Daring Bakers Challenge came and I got to make some lovely Mallows (Chocolate covered marshmallows on biscuits). The marshmallow for that recipe went surprisingly well and inspired me to finally make a recipe I had book marked a while ago.

This lemon marshmallow is lovely and strongly flavoured with sweet lemon. Making the marshmallow proved a lot easier than cutting the marshmallow (which involved cleaning the knife after each cut and sprinkling icing mixture or icing sugar in the cuts to stop it sticking back to itself).

To go with the marshmallow, I decided I had to make the sherbet as well. I made a third of the quantity of the original recipe and after trying ¼ teaspoon, my mouth almost started foaming and turning inside out. So after adding another 2 x icing sugar, the craziness of the mixture was finally toned down. (I’m just glad I didn’t use the 75g citric acid they recommended, otherwise I would have had an extremely large excess of sherbet.)

The marshmallow and sherbet work very well together, although the sherbet does tend to overpower the marshmallow, so I would suggest serving these separately or sparingly with the sherbet.

Lemon Marshmallows with Lemon Sherbet
Recipe from Gourmet Traveller.com.au (Sherbet recipe slighty adapted)

Makes about 25

25g powdered gelatine
185ml (¾ cup) lemon juice
½ lemon, finely grated rind only
500g caster sugar
1 tablespoon liquid glucose
2 eggwhites
For dusting: snow sugar (see note) (I used icing mixture, it went a bit hard after a few days, but worked well enough)

Lemon sherbet
25g citric acid (see note)
95g pure icing sugar (or icing mixture if that’s what you have)
1/3 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda, finely sieved
1/3 lemon, finely grated rind only

Combine gelatine, lemon juice and rind in a small bowl and stand until lemon juice is absorbed (1-2 minutes). Fill a bowl with boiling water and place bowl of gelatine mixture on top and stand until gelatine has dissolved (1-2 minutes). Keep warm.

Combine sugar, glucose and 200ml water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar, then brush down sides of pan using a wet, clean pastry brush and cook over medium heat until syrup reaches 125C on a sugar thermometer (5-10 minutes).

Meanwhile, whisk eggwhites using an electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form. Increase speed to high and whisk to firm peaks. With motor running and mixer speed on medium, slowly and simultaneously add syrup and gelatine mixture in a thin stream. Whisk until mixture cools to blood temperature.

Spoon into a baking paper-lined 20cm-square cake tin, smooth top using a wet palette knife and refrigerate until firm (1-2 hours). Cut into cubes, roll in snow sugar and refrigerate until required.

For lemon sherbet, sift ingredients through a fine sieve into a dry bowl (sherbet must remain dry to retain fizz effect). It will keep refrigerated in a dry airtight container for 1 week.

Serve marshmallows dusted heavily in lemon sherbet and eat immediately. (I used the sherbet sparingly over the marshmallows).

Note: Snow sugar is a mixture of icing sugar and vegetable fats, resulting in an icing sugar that can be used to dust slightly moist cakes without dissolving as quickly as ordinary icing sugar. It is available from select delicatessens. Substitute with icing sugar. Citric acid is available from the baking section of major supermarkets. Make sure all ingredients for lemon sherbet stay completely dry otherwise you will lose the fizz effect.

Filed under Cakes, Slices and Biscuits, Egg Whites, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.