Sweet Potato Marshmallows

This time of year means lots of holiday parties, which gives me many opportunities to bake and cook to my heart's content.  Last year, at our neighbor's party I brought Oatmeal Stout Marshmallows, which were quite a hit.  This year, a different spin - sweet potato marshmallows.

Now, I can't take the credit for coming up with the flavor.  That would be my friend, Chut, who incidentally, taught me how to make marshmallows in the first place.  However, it's definitely a favorite of mine.

A holiday flavor, reminiscent of sweet potato casserole, of course.  But this is a delicate, velvety treat without any of the trouble of a goopy casserole.  If you're not necessarily a fan of eating the marshmallows straight, it works well in hot chocolate (it actually was really good, despite what you might think of the flavor).

I also tried something new for the 'shapes' of the marshmallows.  Typically I'd spread them in a prepared, shallow pan and then cut them with a pizza cutter.  It works fine, and is definitely a 'rustic' look.  This time, I put the marshmallow in a Ziploc bag, cut off a corner, and piped a few rows of it so I'd just have to 'slice' them instead of cutting out squares.  It made for more uniform marshmallows and was quite a bit easier and an easy cleanup.  The perfection of technique continues!

The recipe below is actually a halved recipe of the original.  But unless you have an army to feed, I'd stick with the smaller amount, as a little goes a long way with these treats.

Sweet Potato Marshmallows
(Chut's recipe)

Cold mixture:
1/4 cup water
1 packet of gelatin
Pour water in stand mixer bowl, and sprinkle the packet of gelatin on top and let sit while you work on the syrup.

Flavoring:
1/4 cup, rounded, of sweet potato puree (I used canned, unsweetened puree, but if you were ambitious, I'm sure you could make your own)
1/4 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
Pinch nutmeg

Syrup:
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup hot water
Combine into saucepan over medium-high heat.  Cook until it reaches 240 degrees (soft-ball stage).  It took roughly 10 minutes on medium-high heat.  Remove from heat and pour slowly into stand mixer, with whisk attachment, and whip at high speed until it's opaque,  no longer runny, and at least doubled in volume, and is much stiffer, about 10-15 minutes.  In the beginning of the whipping of this, add the sweet potato puree and spices.

While it's whipping, put parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and lightly spray with cooking spray, and lightly sprinkle cornstarch on it.  After marshmallow is done whipping, scoop into large Ziploc bag and cut off corner.  Pipe straight rows (it was about 4 of them for me), and sprinkle cornstarch over it and let sit for at least and hour or two to completely set.

A pizza cutter works GREAT to cut the mallows, and coat all sides of mallows with cornstarch to keep from sticking all over everything.

Enjoy!