Oreo Marshmallows {a recipe}

Honest to goodness, I eat clean.  I really do.  But lets be real for a quick sec.  Clean eating doesn't make for fun posts.  Put plain chicken on grill.  Grill.  The End.  See?  Boring. Therefore, I bake and make other goodness to blog about! My fabulous in-laws (how many people can say that?) were here over Easter and my father-in-law, well lets just say he likes his nighttime snack.  Because of this we now have a plethora of snacks in this house and among them is a new bag container thing of Oreos.  Ahh, my beloved Oreos.  I make a point of NOT buying these amazing cookies for one very simple reason reason:

I have no self control when it comes to Oreos.  I. LOVE. ME. SOME. OREOS.

So in my mind the logical thing to do to get rid of them is to make something out of them.  It was about halfway through the process of recreating these Oreos that I realized I was taking a simple cookie and like quadmillioning the sugar and fat, well maybe not the fat, but the sugar fo sho, content of them and would have probably been better off just eating the darn cookies as they were...  But I digress.

OREO MARSHMALLOWS

13 Oreos, ground into coarse crumbs
7 Oreos, ground into fine crumbs
3 packets unflavored gelatin
1 cup water, divided
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup light corn sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 Tablespoon vanilla extract


We start with a few of these.  YUM.

As the ingredient list previewed, in a food processor crush 13 cookies into chunky crumbs and 7 cookies  into fine crumbs.  I do not have a food processor so I did the coarse crumbs by hand and started to do the fine crumbs by hand.  Many minutes later I grew a brain and threw them in the blender.  PULSE PULSE.. crumbs.  FANTASTIC.

Lightly spray a nonmetal baking pan with cooking spray.  Mine was 8x11 or something. Take half the fine crumbs and sprinkle bottom of pan with them.  Set aside.

Now take out your stand mixer and with the whisk attachment combine 3 packs of gelatin and 1/2 cup water.  Ps. the gelatin stinks.  Just a warning.

Mix until blended.  Turn mixer off and go to next step.  This will become goopy, but that is ok.

In a sauce pan combine sugar, corn syrup, salt and water.  Heat until granulated sugar dissolves.  Now stick in your candy thermometer and boil on high until it reaches 240 (soft ball stage).

A side note on candy therms.  I did not own one so I picked up this piece of crap at WallyWorld for like 2 bucks. It sort of sucked.  The clip didn't clip to my pan and it was hard to read because it got steamy.  However, while I was getting steam burn holding the darn thing in my boiling sugar and trying desperately to figure out where 240 was, I noticed the handy SOFT BALL STAGE note on it and said, "well that's fantastic!"

Back to the marshmallows.  Take your 240 boiling sugar and with your mixer containing your now goopy gelatin on low, pour in your super hot sugar.  CAREFULLY. PLEASE.  Once all poured in turn your mixer on medium and mix for 15 minutes. Once again, its pewey.  But that goes away. I recommend cleaning the pot that contained your sugar during this 15 minutes.  I am not responsible for any ruined pots because you decided to watch tv at this point and didn't clean your pot.  A TIP: use hot water to clean.

Oh.. side note numba 2.  It is probably a good idea to switch your whisk attachment to the paddle attachment before mixing the sugar and gelatin, because THIS? was a bitty to work with.

After 15 minutes turn the mixer off and go "oooooooh" at the shiny pretty fluffy marshmallow you have made. Then add the vanilla.  Mix till blended.

Add the coarse oreo crumbs.  Mix till blended.

Spoon the marshmallow mixture onto your crumbs in the pan and spread out.  Top with remaining fine crumbs.  Sit on counter UNCOVERED overnight.  Yes, UNCOVERED.

The next day (or about 10 hours later) cut into squares and eat.