A few weeks ago I seemingly lost my mind and decided that making marshmallows was a wise idea. My first attempt was an unmitigated DISASTER as I chose a particularly vague recipe to follow, which made no mention of temperatures, boiling points or the VITAL NEED FOR A SUGAR THERMOMETER which I now know is the most important piece of kitchen equipment you need to make marshmallows.

I thankfully can’t find a picture of batch number one, which is a very good thing bcos it looked like a brownie pan of semi set snot. It looked so bad, and I was so stressed, that my boyfriend offered to have a sugar thermometer couriered across london for me so I could immediately try again. I mean, who even offers that? That’s why he’s my soulmate, ladies and gentlemen.

For round two I chose a more thorough recipe, bought myself a fancy thermometer that I’ll almost definitely never use ever again, stocked up on the right ingredients, and took a deep breath.

Aforementioned soulmate out-soulmated himself at christmas and bought me a multicoloured Kmix that barely fits in our little kitchen but I’m obsessed with, which made the whole marshmallow whisking process a million times easier than it would have been by hand. My master recipe even said “put stand mixer on medium high speed and leave for 10 minutes.” Imagine doing that with a balloon whisk?!

Marshmallows, I’ve discovered, are essentially just sugar, melted into more sugar, and then solidified. I don’t know what I thought they were, but for some reason it wasn’t that. And if that wasn’t enough sugar already, when they’re set you cut them up into squares and then roll them in icing sugar.

Also – marshmallow is possibly the greatest adhesive ever invented. In the process of trying to scoop the mixture out of the Kmix and into a pan to set, I managed to glue the spatula to the bowl, the bowl to the side, my hands to the spatula, and marshmallow to the hob.

Whilst they were certainly aesthetically more pleasing, Batch Two still wasn’t perfect, and tasted very strongly of golden syrup and not a lot else. Boy refused to even try one so I took them to work and forced them into my colleagues mouths before they could protest. Batch Three will be much better, I swear..