Malteser Marshmallows

Over the past few months I have been participating in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with edX, my chosen subject being Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. Over the weeks topics such as viscosity, elasticity, heat transfer, baking and fermentation have all been covered and it's been both challenging and interesting. It's finally got to the end of the course and we're all expected to submit a final project and I have chosen to make a favourite of mine, marshmallows!

If you've never made marshmallows at home before then you're really missing out, they are a world away from the synthetic little cylinders you buy from shops. These are soft, light and easily packed full of flavour.

Anyway, I'll skip past the whole experiment bit and get straight on with the recipe. There are only two pieces of equipment you really need which is a sugar thermometer and either a stand mixer or an electric hand held whisk - trust me you wouldn't want to use pure arm power for this!

I started from a recipe in a beautiful little book that I was lucky enough to get for Christmas called Marshmallow Magic but tweaked it a bit to my liking. This recipe will be enough for 30 chunky marshmallows.


Making marshmallows only require a few ingredients:
500g granulated sugar
250ml cold water
2 egg whites
9 sheets of gelatine
200g of Maltesers (crushed)
6tsp of hot chocolate powder
6tsp of hot water

For greasing the tin:
1tsp oil
1tbsp icing sugar
1tbsp cournflour

1. Grease the tin with the oil and then sieve over the icing sugar and cornflour so the entire tin is covered.
2. Place your sheets of gelatine in a shallow dish and cover with cold water, leave to the side. Mix the hot chocolate powder and hot water together to form a thick liquid and leave to the side.
3. Pour the sugar and water into a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved and then raise the heat. 
4. Whilst the sugar solution is heating up whisk two egg whites until they form soft peaks. Don't leave your sugar out of sight! 
5. Keep checking the temperature of the sugar solution until it reaches 122c, for me this takes about 7-10 minutes. Once it reaches this temperature knock off the heat straight away. 
6. Begin to whisk your eggs again and slowly trickle in the hot syrup, watch out though - you don't want to spray hot syrup everywhere. Once all the syrup has been incorporated you can begin to add your gelatine sheets one at a time (keep whisking!), ensuring you squeeze the water from them before adding. 
7. Whisk for about 10 minutes at a high speed, it will increase in size and become smooth and glossy, then you can add the hot chocolate mixture and whisk until combined.
8. Finally fold in most of your Maltesers and pour it into your tin, smoothing the top over before sprinkling a final few Maltesers for decoration.
9. Leave them to set in a cool place (not the fridge) for at least 2 hours before cutting them into chunks.

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Sausage Jambalaya - Under 500 calories!

We've become a big fan of jambalya in recent months. It's cheap, easy, quick and with a little help from reduced fat sausages; not too unhealthy. In fact this comes in at under 500 calories per serving - not that you'd guess it from how filling it is. 

We have tweaked a recipe we found on the Tesco website to make it a little more waistline friendly. You'll need the following:

• 200g long grain rice
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 8 reduced fat sausages (Sainsburys Butchers Choice)
• Cajun Seasoning (can be bought in jars or sachets)
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 250g of frozen mixed veg (small chunks work best)

First of all get prepped. Rinse the rice under cold water until the water runs clear, chop each sausage into 3 chunks, slice your onion and measure out 400ml of water.

Now, lets get cooking!

1. Heat the tablespoon of oil in a large pan and brown the sausages
2. Once brown add the onions and the cajun seasoning (how much you add is really down to personal preference) and stir. Cook for another 2 minutes.
3. Pop in the washed rice, stir in for 30 seconds and then add the water and tomatoes - it'll look really sloppy but don't worry, it will thicken up. 
4. Bring to the boil and then cover and lower the heat to simmer it for 10 minutes.
5. Add the frozen veggies, stir it again and cook for another 10 minutes. 
6. Et voila! Serve it up - we find this does the two of us for two nights.

Vital stats:

471 calories per serving

63g of carbs

13g fat

25g protein

8g sugar

83p per serving (all basic/value products apart from the sausages)

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