Karen's BBQ Intro

Welcome guests of Karen's BBQ.

There's not a lot to see here yet. I started the blog about a year ago at the urging of my critique partner, but I didn't really  have anything to say at the time. So, it's sat, mostly unused, while I try to get my writing ducks in a row.

About me: I'm trained as a graphic artist, which naturally means I neglect to work on design for my own web presence. I've been writing, nearly everyday, for over a decade. However, the 10 years or so, my writing was confined to the world of online roleplay--MUSHes, which I like to explain as interactive storytelling or RPG's with an entirely text-based interface. MUSHing helped me develop a love for writing, as well as my voice and style, but learning the whole storytelling process on your own aspect has occupied me most of the past year. My most loved genre is paranormal romance, but my voice is more irreverent than dark, so until they come out with paranormal romantic comedy, I am focusing my attention on contemporary romance.

What you'll find here: Updates on WIPs, discussions about different aspects of writing(what works for me, attempts to find out what works for others), storytelling/writing as a severe dyslexic, documentaries(I'm such a  nerd), Ideas, questions about organization, Possibly some ranting about this or that, Idiotic things when the mood strikes, Books, Design.

I've brought homemade blackberry marshmallows to the BBQ, and if you're interested in trying your hand at making them, my recipe is after the jump!

Amalie's Blackberry Mallows:

I tell myself they're low in calorie (they are, if you can stop eating the lil suckers), and therefore diet-friendly! You should not attempt this if you don't have either: a) a good stand mixer, or b) a good hand mixer -- by good, I mean with a motor 300+ watts, anything lower will cause the motor to burn out when the marshmallow starts to get thick. For a stand mixer, you want to use the whisk attachment, but for hand mixer, wire beaters will be great.

Total prep-time: 12-24 hours

Ingredients:
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 1/2 cups frozen blackberries
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons water
dash of salt
juice from 1/2 a fresh lemon
3 packages of unflavored gelatin

Stage one--preparing the berries:
This can be a bit time consuming, but I have no concept of time so I don't know how long it will take. Best guess: lots of minutes, but probably less than half hour. Probably.
    1. Nuke frozen berries + 2 tablespoons of water in microwave-safe dish on high for 1.5-3 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds. This will soften them and start to break down the pulp. Stop when berries are soft enough to smash with a spoon. Definitely stop before they start smelling brown, like cooked berries.
    2. Toss hot berries into a small food processor. Pulse several times until liquified, and then pass through a small sieve to remove the seeds. Go in small batches, and dump seeds often.
    3. At the end of this process, you need 1/2 cup of the liquid berry stuff (minus seeds). If you end up with a little less than 1/2 cup, you can do more berries or for a slightly less blackberry flavor, make up difference with cold water. Juice half a lemon and add to the berry concoction, and chill until cold.

Making the mallows:
    1. In a very large mixing bowl, pour your cold berry mixture and whisk together with the 3 packets of unflavored gelatin. It will get thick fast. Let stand(bloom) 15 minutes.
    2. Prep pan. I use a 9x13 baking dish and get 1" thick mallows, but if you want thicker, use a smaller pan. Spritz lightly with cooking spray to keep the wax paper sticking to the sides, and then spritz again. This will let the wax paper detach from mallows later. This stuff is extremely sticky.
    3. After 15 minutes, time to start heating sugars. Pay close attention and don't do with small children in kitchen. Hot sugar is like lava. The lovely part of this recipe: no thermometer needed. In a large, heavy sauce pan over low/medium-low heat, combine sugar, syrup and 1/2 cup of water, DO NOT STIR. If you get any stray grains of sugar on the sides of your pan, swipe them off with a wet paper towel or later your mallows will be gritty. It will melt fine without stirring. When sugar mixture is clear, increase to medium-high heat and wait. It will start to boil, probably in the center first. When the boil is vigorous and covers the entire surface of the sugar, time it for 60 seconds.
    5. When 60 seconds are up, take hot molten sugar to your gelatin mixture and pour in. Stand back, it will foam up immediately when it hits the gelatin. This is why you need a very large mixing bowl. Put the sugar pan into sink and hot water(for ease of cleanup later).
    6. With your mixer on low, slowly start to beat mixture. At this clear liquid, lava stage, it splashes easy. Splashes are bad. Ow. After a couple minutes, when it's gone from clear to cloudy and a stopped splashing, increase the speed through the levels when you're sure it's not so high it will splash. Marshmallow Safety! By the time you reach 3 minutes or so, you can move to high speed. It will seem like it's not going to thicken up for the first few minutes, but once it starts to thicken, it will thicken fast.
    7. Total beat time: 7-10 minutes, depending on humidity and your mixer speed. Whip as long as you can. When it gets thick it will start crawling up the beaters and you'll have to lift and lower the mixer as you move it around to keep it from taking over. I have a hand mixer, and I stop when it's glossy, stringy, and I'm exhausted. Mostly, if you can hit 8 minutes, and the stuff is crawling up your beaters, you're alright.
    8. Spritz rubber spatula with cooking spray and pour into wax-paper-lined pan. Do not underestimate how sticky this stuff is going to be. Rather than trying to spread with the spatula, I spritz another piece of wax paper and lay over the top of it, and then just use my hands on the other side to smooth as much as possible, but if you like the lovely topography you get from spreading out, by all means do so. Make sure you cover it at the end, however, because it needs to sit for 12-24 hours, and the mallow exposed to air will get tough otherwise.
    9. If you cannot wait, you can turn it onto a powdered-sugar-dusted cutting board at 12 hours, unless you used a small pan for thick mallows, then you are stuck at 24. To cut, you can spritz kitchen scissors and snip into squares, I use a pizza cutter and the occasional cookie cutter to get shapes(Cooking spray spritz anything you cut with. Seriously. Sticky.) Immediately put freshly cut pieces into powdered sugar and move around, this will keep them from sticking together when you bag them. Again, the air will make the outside toughen, so keeping in a ziptop bag or covered dish is a good idea if they will be out more than an hour.