Homemade pastille is an incredibly delicious and extremely healthy dessert that can be prepared from a wide variety of berries and fruits. It includes pectin, fiber and vitamins. Even a novice will be able to cook apricot pastille. Apricot candy has a beautiful color and a delicious aroma. In addition, it is very sweet in taste, therefore, when preparing it, sugar can not be added at all! Consider some pastry recipes from apricots. At home, preparing such a dessert is not difficult.
Advice
Let us dwell in more detail on the general principles of preparation:
- Apricots for high-quality pastille must be taken only ripe. When using unripe fruits (even in small quantities) the finished product will turn out to be bitter.
- Rinse the apricots well, if there are damaged places, they should be removed, remove the seeds.
- Apricots can be made from fresh fruit, as well as after their heat treatment.
- In case the fruits are very sweet, adding sugar to prepare the dessert is not required.
- Drying the pastille at home is recommended in a draft, in the oven, in a slow cooker or in a dryer.
- If mashed potatoes are used to prepare pastille, then it should be boiled on a very low fire until the mass is halved.
Storage methods
Ready marshmallows should be stored in a cold place, in a jar with a lid or small trays. If the pastille is intended for long-term storage, it should be rolled up in jars with metal lids.
Apricot Marshmallow Recipe
Consider cooking pastille according to an old recipe. First you should make apricot puree. To do this, take ripe apricots, rinse them thoroughly, remove the seeds. Add the fruits to the bowl, add sugar - based on two tablespoons per kilogram of fruit. If the apricots are sweet, you can not put sugar. Put the resulting mixture on low heat and cook, stirring constantly until the mass is halved. Cooking time may take several hours.
Pass the mashed potatoes through a sieve, spread on a baking sheet, which must first be covered with calcined parchment paper. If you want to get a crispy pastille from apricots, put the mashed potatoes in a layer of 0.5 cm, for a softer and more delicate consistency - 1 cm thick. Put the baking sheets in the sun to dry the pastille. When it dries a little, remove it from paper and put it on wooden boards. It should be dried for several days. The result is a dense, non-sticky apricot marshmallow. It can be cut into different pieces or simply rolled into a roll.
Apricot marshmallow at home
Prepare a pastille that does not require heat treatment. To make it, you will need very ripe apricots and any light honey (acacia, clover, lime or blackberry). First you need to wash the fruits, remove the seeds from them and make mashed apricots. To it we add honey to taste.
We mix the mass well and spread it in a thin layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment or cling film. Cover with gauze on top (avoiding contact with the pastille) and set to dry. For this purpose, you can use a gas oven or an electric dryer, or you can simply dry the pastille in the sun.
Apricot pastille in an electric dryer
For this marshmallow, we need the following ingredients:
- apricots - 1 kg;
- water - 200 ml;
- granulated sugar - 1 kg;
- citric acid - 1 g;
- cinnamon - a pinch.
First of all, apricots need to be washed, divided into parts. Fold the fruits in a bowl and bring to a boil over low heat, then remove from heat and grind them in a blender. To this mass, you need to add 200 grams of granulated sugar, mix, put on low heat and cook until the mixture thickens. Then you should pour a glass of water into it, add the rest of the sugar and add cinnamon and acid. Continue to cook until the mass becomes thick again. Lay out the finished product on sheets of parchment paper and dry in an electric dryer, this procedure will take about 3 hours.
Marshmallow in a slow cooker
Cooking pastille from apricots in a slow cooker will take place in two stages - cooking jam and drying pastille. For jam, you need to take 0.5 kilograms of apricots and 1 tablespoon of sugar and put in a slow cooker, put on the "Baking" mode and cook for an hour without closing the lid. When the mass decreases by half, remove it from the bowl of the multicooker and, if necessary, beat with a blender. Put the mass back into the multicooker, pre-lubricating it with vegetable oil. Bake should be in the same mode for 1 hour, then put on parchment and dry. If desired, chopped walnuts or other nuts can be added to the pastille. Ready-made dessert can be cut into pieces and roll in coconut flakes or powdered sugar.
Pastille in the oven
In the oven, drying the pastille takes much less time than in the fresh air, in the sun. For the preparation of pastille, we take fresh washed seedless apricots. Fruits can be boiled in a small amount of water for about ten minutes or blanched in boiling water. We wipe the finished mixture through a sieve and place on low heat, cook, stirring constantly until the mass decreases by one and a half to two times. On the prepared baking sheets we spread the mashed potatoes with a layer up to 2 centimeters thick and put in the oven, heated to a temperature of 60-70 degrees. If there is no oven with such a temperature, you can put in a conventional oven with the lowest temperature and dry the pastille with the door open. This procedure will take about three hours, the pastille should be regularly turned over, separating it from the paper.
You can make pastilles to decorate desserts. To do this, you need to take very ripe apricots, peel them, remove the seeds and grind in a blender. Put a thin layer on a baking sheet with oiled parchment and smooth with a culinary brush. Dry in the oven until the pastille is translucent. This marshmallow is cut into thin strips along with paper, which is then removed, and the marshmallow itself is used to decorate desserts.
Almond Recipe
In order to cook pastille according to this recipe, you will need the following products:
- apricots - 2 kg;
- sugar - 0.8 kg;
- almonds - 0.2 kg;
- some cinnamon.
First of all, you need to wash the apricots and extract the seeds from them, chop in a blender. Put prepared mashed potatoes on low heat, cook, stirring, not bringing to a boil. When the mixture thickens, pour sugar in it, crushed almonds, cinnamon into fine crumbs. We cook the mass for as long as it takes to reduce it by half. We spread the finished puree in 2 centimeters thick on a sheet with parchment and send it to the oven preheated to 50 degrees.