Dipping Mallows, or the deconstruction of a S'More.

So the chicken breakdown happened, but taking pics was a little too complicated, especially with Jaimee, who, literally within seconds of seeing the chicken, managed to fling the knife onto the floor, grazing her leg. This speaks more to Jaimee's skills over my ability to teach people who to cut apart a chicken. I will do it again soon and have someone there to take some pics.

HOWEVER, I do have a pic of the fun new dessert we created, messy, yummy, gooey marshmallow dippers! Homemade marshmallows are amazing, and i know that not everyone has the time to make them, but they are worth it if you get the chance! Here is what we did, marshmallow recipe from Ina Garten. She says you should wait for it to set overnight, but, as you will see, that is a completely made up rule that you don't need to follow. Unless you want to. But you won't be able to. Because yum.

What goes in:

3 packets of unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
ANOTHER 1/2 cup of water
1 1/2 cups of light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
confectioners' sugar (dusting the pan/mallows)

1 cup chocolate pieces/chips. I like semisweet, but go with what you like!
1/2 milk, I used skim, cause I had it
pat o' butter, about a tablespoon

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup of peanuts (OR if you are like me and want to mix it up, use "Sweet Cajun" trail mix, which I love and get from Target.

a packet of Graham Crackers

BRITTLE

Before you get started, make sure you have all the stuff you need in place. This means, pot on the stove, baking sheet nearby, covered either with silpat (a silicone baking liner, which does not melt with high heat) or non-stick tinfoil (which, until some report comes out in a few years telling me it is horrible stuff, I love), a heatproof stirring utensil (again, silicone is the hero here, I have a silicone spatula).

Take the one cup of sugar, put it in a pot and turn on the heat, medium. You are now making a dry caramel.

See the edges? MMMMM, caramel. Caramel is one of my favorite things in this world. ESPECIALLY when you add salty things to it. So once your caramel is brown, and you don't see any sugar, turn off the heat and add your half cup of (whatever you are putting in). This is where your heatproof spatula comes into play. After stirring for a little but, pour the mixture (CAREFULLY! Melted sugar is like molten lava. Actually, do me a favor and think of molten lava anytime you make caramel. You don't want this stuff landing on you) on to the sheet pan with the non-stick stuff on it. Put it aside and let it cool.

Brittle!

MARSHMALLOWS

OK, so now time for homemade marshmallows! I keep wanting to write marshMELLOW, which, as spellcheck keeps reminding me, is wrong. I think I need to adjust the way I say it. MALLOW. MA-low. Ok, got it.

Things you will need for this: A candy thermometer and a stand mixer, as well as a lightly dusted with confectioners' sugar 8x11 glass baking dish.

In the bowl of the stand mixer, combine the water and the 3 packages of gelatin. Mix them together, then just let them sit in the bowl while you start mixing the rest of the stuff in the saucepan. 

Put the sugar, corn syrup, salt and other half a cup of water into the saucepan, with the candy thermometer attached, turn the heat on medium and wait for the sugar to dissolve. Once it does, turn the heat up high, and keep an eye on it until the thermometer hits 240. The second it does...maybe even the second before it does, take the pan off the heat.

Turn the mixer with the gelatin (which now looks a little solid) on to low and slowly (and let me be honest, I was not great at pouring this slowly, but I didn't pour it in too fast either) pour in the hot liquid. Again, mixer slow, if it is too fast, it will throw the molten sugar mix (see, that came back into play! MOLTEN!) around the kitchen, and probably on you. Or your dogs. Which if they are like mine, are sitting by your feet. Ridiculously inconvenient. 

Once the mixture has been poured in, keep the mixer running on low to medium until it starts to thicken up, then turn it on to medium high. Run it for about 15 minutes, and you will start to see it thicken and fluff up. I put the vanilla in at about 13 minutes, I was nervous that it would splash, so when I added it, I turned the mixer on low until it was incorporated.

After the 15 minutes, turn off the mixer, detach it and pour it into the dusted baking dish. Dust the top with some more powdered sugar (you know confectioners' sugar and powdered sugar are the same, right? The interesting thing is it has an anti-caking, or anti-clumping, agent added to it, like corn starch. You can make your own powdered sugar by blending regular sugar in a coffee grinder, but it will obviously not have the anti-caking agent in it, so it might not act exactly the same if it is being used as an actual ingredient, as opposed to a non-sticking-to-the-side-of-the-baking-dish sort of thing.)

SO, Ina told Jaimee and I we should wait overnight for the mallow's to set. But these kinds of rules are in place for people with ridiculous wills of steel. As evidences by our now creating a chocolate dipping sauce

CHOCOLATE DIPPING SAUCE

So easy and it comes out beautiful. Use it for anything you want. Like dipping not fully set marshmallows into it, then dipping those into a brittle/graham cracker crumb thing.

So, you need to make a double boiler. Easy. One sauce pot, one metal mixing bowl. Some water. Done!

Fill the pot with water, less than half way. You don't want the metal mixing bowl to actually touch the water. It needs to fit on top of the sauce pot, not fall it, and be easily removed when you are ready to pour it out. Turn the heat on, you want to boil the water and heat up the metal bowl, basically using indirect heat on the chocolate, which burns pretty easily, to melt it and make some yummy things happen. Put your one cup of chocolate pieces into the bowl, along with the milk and let it start to melt and combine. Don't stir too much, just let thing start happening. When you see it starting to melt, you can begin mixing it a bit. Once it has come together, throw in your pat of butter, and mix it in. Turn off the heat and you have a chocolate dipping sauce!

BRITTLE/GRAHAM CRUMB

Take your brittle, break it up a little, put it in a blender or food processor, add in the package of graham crackers and blast it until it is a crumb. Done!

And here we are! If you are like Jaimee (and Eric) and myself, you will take a spoon, grab some sticky 'mallow, dip it in the chocolate and then dip that into the crumb and nearly die from awesomeness, only to be resuscitated a second later because you realize that there is more and zombies don't eat this awesomeness.