Homemade Marshmallows and Graham Crackers

What's better than a homemade S'more? You can easily made homemade graham crackers and marshmallows with just adding a few new ingredients to your pantry.

Click here to skip to the Graham Cracker recipe.

Marshmallows

When made at home, marshmallows are squares, or cubes.  Actually, they sit better on graham crackers for s'mores!  

These take 15-20 minutes to whip up, then after they have hardened a few hours, just about 5 minutes more to cut up and dip in powdered sugar.  NOTE: my pictures are from doing 1/3 of the recipe because I was low on ingredients.  Yours will look three times as much!  Mine look thin, too.  Yours will be double thick.

3 envelopes of Knox Gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cups corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
Confectioners' (powdered) sugar for dredging and dusting work space

1. In a bowl on an electric mixer, sprinkle gelatin over the 1/2 cup cold water and let soak for 10 minutes while you do step 2.
2. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and 1/4 cup water in a sauce pan, bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute.
3. Pour boiling mixture over gelatin, add in salt.
4. Mix with cookie dough paddle attachment at high speed for 12 minutes.
5. Add in vanilla and mix until blended.
6. Line a 9x13" pan lined with foil. Spray with cooking oil.  Sprinkle on powdered sugar, just like you would do with flour on an oiled pan.
7. Pour in mixture and spread as best you can - don't get hung up on stuff stuck to the spoon or bowl - it's super sticky and you're just going to lose some along the way.
8. Use a sheet of wax paper or foil the size of the pan - spray it with cooking oil.  Then turn it over and pat it on top of the marshmallow to flatter it, spreading evenly.
9. Let the marshmallow sit for a few hours.
10. Using kitchen scissors, cut the marshmallow into pieces.
11. The newly cut sides of the marshmallows will be sticky, so put some powdered sugar into a bowl and dip the sides of the marshmallows into the sugar.  Use your finger to wipe off excess sugar.

  

Knox gelatin sprinkled on water in your mixer bowl

 Sugar, water, corn syrup on stove (I did medium high heat)

Corn syrup mixture boiling for 1 minute

 Mixing gelatin mixture and corn syrup mixture on high for 12 minutes

 Starting to get fluffy!

 "Pouring" it out - sticky!

Prepared pan (mine is smaller since I cut recipe in 1/3): oiled and dusted with powdered sugar

 Using a greased sheet of wax paper to press it down in the pan

*Because I'm doing 1/3 of recipe, it's not reaching the sides of the pan and is thinner than usual.

 After sitting over night, cutting up marshmallows and dredging in powdered sugar so edges aren't sticky.

 Finished marshmallows!

 They can go in a bag together since they aren't sticky anymore

Graham Crackers

Making graham crackers is just like making cut-out cookies. You can use any cookie cutter or use a pizza cutter to cut out strips and rectangles. Pick cookie cutters that are small so the crackers can be dipped into milk still (too wide and they don't fit in the glass!).

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons molasses
1/4 cup cold water
1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour, such as Bob's Red Mill or you can buy it the bulk bins. The recipe says light, but I tried dark rye and it worked.
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. In a mixer, mix butter, sugar, honey, molasses, vanilla, and water.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon.  Then add slowly to the mixer bowl and mix on low/medium until blended.  The good thing is: no eggs! So you can EAT the raw dough to taste it.
3. Sprinkle some flour onto a sheet of wax paper, then put the dough on it.  Wrap up and put in the fridge for 1 hour to harden - this makes it easier to roll and cut out.
4. Once cold, flour your surface, roll out dough to 1/4-1/8" thick-ish, cut, and put cookies/crackers on ungreased baking sheets.
5.  If you want to make them have those prick holes like store bought crackers, use a fork to poke the cookies.
6. Bake for 10 minutes at 350°F, don't over bake.  If they are turning dark brown, it's too long!

Roll and cut with a pizza cutter.

Prick with a fork (optional).

Put in the oven for 10 minutes.

The bottoms should NOT be very browned or else they will taste burnt.  This one is perfect.

Ready to eat!

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