Cloud Shaped Marshmallows, Calamari Rings And Mac & Cheese

Was so busy with school, Vickii and i never managed to have our occasional bake dates or food hunts. Actually, looking back at my archives, the last time we baked together was way back in May! And since exams ended, we decided to dedicate a whole Sunday to baking, cooking, chilling and just catching up. What better way to spend a Sunday right? 🙂

So everything started at 9:30 in the morning when i popped by her place. We didn’t have a solid plan of what to bake or cook! Only that we were going to make cloud shaped marshmallows!

Springy, Fluffy Marshmallows
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen

1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 1/2 envelopes (2 tablespoons plus 2 1/2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
1 cup cold water, divided
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites or reconstituted powdered egg whites (we used egg whites)
1 tablespoon vanilla (alternately: 1/2 of a scraped vanilla bean, 2 teaspoons almond or mint extract or maybe even some food coloring for tinting)

1. In a large bowl, sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold water, and let stand to soften
2. In a heavy saucepan, heat corn syrup, second 1/2 of the cold water and salt over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved
3. Increase heat to moderate and boil, without stirring, until a candy/digital thermometer reaches 240F, about 12 mins
4. Remove pan from heat and pour sugar mixture over gelatin misture, stirring until gelatin is dissolved
5. Beat mixture with an electric hand or stand mixer on high until white, thick and tripled in volume
6. In a seperate clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks
7. Beat whites and vanilla (or any choice of flavouring) into sugar mixture until just combined
8. Pour mixture into prepared pan (greased and generously covered with icing sugar
9. Chill uncovered for at least 3 hours, up to one day

We halved this recipe by the way!

Pouring into a prepared pan

All that sticky goodness!

We were trying our best to scrape every bit out!

These are definitely much less sweeter than store bought ones! So much fun making em.

We then left it in the fridge to set .

You can remove it by running a knife along the sides and pulling it out. Shouldn’t be too hard. You can check out Smitten Kitchen’s post for more detailed steps!

Eat it with your favourite breakfast cereal..

Photo Courtesy of Vickii

Or a cup of hot cocoa! If you’re wondering how we got the cloud shapes (we don’t have cloud shaped cookie cutters, sadly), we used a 4-petaled flower cutter to cut the marshmallow out, and snipped off a petal. Haha, no it didn’t go to waste, cos they all went into our tummies as we made them 😛

Next we made calamari rings!

Okay confession. We didn’t exactly followed a recipe? Haha. The first time we mixed beer (yes beer, because we somehow stumbled upon beer battered ones), semolina flour, eggs, salt, pepper.. I think that’s all. Haha, but the thing is, it couldnt coat the calimari. Everything slid off. Our first calamari ring was just deep fried without a coating LOL.

But change to plans, of course. We ended up just using 3 parts semolina flour, 1 part corn starch, salt and pepper to coat it! You could add your own herbs and stuff, it’s really up to you. Deep fry and eat on the spot!

We ate it with chilli and tartar sauce 🙂

This lasted us the rest of the day. Heh, we spent as much time on taking photos as we spent cooking and baking! Hahaha, if we were ever to host a pot luck or a dinner, i think our friends will just kill us.

This is probably the first time we cooked together – we’re always baking! And usually all desserts/sweet stuff. This is a change! Haha and we both agree that cooking is wayyyyy easier. Especially when it’s easier to fix when something goes wrong!

Next we had on the list.. Mac & Cheese! Well it supposed to be that simple. But us being us, we wanted colour. Hahaha, ended up adding all sorts of things! Bacon, tomatoes, mushroom and broccoli.

V chopping the stuff up!

Extra ingredients!

Dumping them all together.

Photo Courtesy of Vickii

And adding sprigs of broccoli.

Thanks Vickii for this unglam picture of me HAHA.

Hahahaha, don’t laugh at me please. Vickii was standing on the chair taking pictures too! We were both doing that at one point of time and her helper saw us and gave us the what-the-heck-are-you-two-doing look. Ah well. We would do anything for nice pictures. Hahaha. We had a good laugh that day looking at each other cleaning the sides of the plates/cups and searching high and low for props to go with our pictures, it was comical.

Photo Courtesy of Vickii

Mixed it with bits of cheese and pouring cream.

We were too lazy to get cheddar and mozzarella so we made do with the squares of cheese in the fridge.

Baking!

Baked, cooked, took photos, listening to the radio and catching up. Everything we love to do together 🙂 I spent a good 9 hours at her place just doing all that. Hehe, the simple pleasures of life.

I missed that girl. We’re already planning our next bake date! Can’t wait 😉

Thanks for reading!