Homemade Marshmallow Recipe Without Corn Syrup
Honey, water and gelatin. That’s the whole list.
This is a marshmallow recipe without corn syrup, and without egg whites, a
candy thermometer, or any ingredient you have to go out and buy specially.
What you get is a marshmallow that stretches, bounces and actually tastes
like honey, which is more than you can say for the bag.
The only part that takes any attention is getting the syrup to the right stage, and we’ll show you how to nail it with a glass of ice water if you don’t own a thermometer. Everything after that is a mixer and a night on the counter.
Why skip the corn syrup (and what honey does instead)
Let’s be straight about this, because most of the internet won’t be: corn syrup isn’t poison. It’s a sugar syrup that keeps other sugars from crystallizing, and it does that job well. We’re not going to tell you it’s going to hurt you.
The reason to skip it is much less dramatic. You probably don’t have a bottle in your cupboard, and buying one for a single batch of candy is annoying. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.
Honey does the same job. A marshmallow is really just a very concentrated sugar syrup whipped full of air and set with gelatin, and concentrated sugar wants to recrystallize, and that turns a marshmallow gritty. Corn syrup gets in the way of those crystals forming. So does honey, for the same reason: it’s a mix of fructose and glucose in uneven proportions, so the molecules never line up into a tidy crystal lattice. Stable syrup, smooth texture, no grit.
Honey brings two things corn syrup doesn’t. It tastes like something. And it’s already in your kitchen.
It also brings one thing to watch: honey foams much more than plain sugar syrup when it boils, easily tripling in the pan. That’s why the recipe below is specific about the saucepan. Too small and it climbs out; too wide and the syrup cooks too fast to time.
And while we’re being straight: this isn’t a health food. It’s ⅔ cup of honey. It’s candy, made at home, out of three things you can pronounce. That’s a good enough reason on its own.
How to make marshmallows without corn syrup, step by step
Homemade Marshmallows Without Corn Syrup
Ingredients
For the syrup
- 220 g honey ⅔ cup, light and mild
- 80 g water ⅓ cup
- 1 pinch salt
For the gelatin
- 80 g cold water ⅓ cup
- 16 g unflavored powdered gelatin 2¼ envelopes
For coating
- 30 g cornstarch ¼ cup
- 30 g powdered sugar ¼ cup, optional
Instructions
- Bloom the gelatin first. Pour the 80 g (⅓ cup) of cold water into a large heat-safe bowl. A metal stand mixer bowl is ideal, but check yours can take hot syrup, because some mixer bowls are plastic. Sprinkle the 16 g of gelatin evenly over the surface, scattered rather than dumped in one pile. Let it sit 5 to 10 minutes, until it looks like wobbly jelly with no dry powder left.
- Start the syrup. In a 2- to 3-quart saucepan, combine the honey, the 80 g (⅓ cup) of water and the salt. Stir just enough to combine.
- Boil about 10 minutes, to 240°F (115-118°C). Once it comes to a boil, stop stirring. Keep an eye on it, because honey climbs the pan fast. No thermometer? See the next section.
- Pour the syrup over the gelatin. With the mixer on low, add the hot syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl, not straight onto the whisk. The heat melts the bloomed gelatin as it goes.
- Turn to high and whip 5 to 10 minutes. It goes from amber liquid to a white, glossy mixture that triples in volume. It's ready when lifting the whisk pulls a thick ribbon that falls slowly and sits on the surface for a second before sinking.
- Scrape into the pan. A 6×8-inch pan lined with greased parchment. Work fast, it firms up quickly, and smooth the top with a greased spatula.
- Let it sit 6 hours or overnight. Room temperature, uncovered. There's no shortcut here.
- Turn out and cut into cubes with a long greased knife.
- Toss in the coating so they don't stick to each other.
Video
Notes
- Use a 2- to 3-quart saucepan, about 6½-7 inches across and at least 4 inches deep. Too small and the honey boils over, since it can triple in volume. Too wide and the syrup sits shallow, cooks faster than the stated 10 minutes, and won’t cover a thermometer bulb.
- Bloom the gelatin in a metal or otherwise heat-safe bowl. The hot syrup goes straight in, and some stand mixer bowls are plastic.
- No thermometer? Drop a little syrup into a glass of ice water. If you can roll it into a soft ball that flattens between your fingers, it’s ready.
- Pour the syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl. Straight onto the whisk it splashes 240°F syrup and sets into hard caramel threads.
- Don’t cover them or set them in the fridge. The surface has to dry in open air so you can cut them.
- Honey is not suitable for children under 12 months.
- Keeps 1 to 2 weeks in an airtight container at room temperature. Not the fridge, where they turn sticky.
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How to hit 240°F without a candy thermometer
240°F is what candy makers call soft-ball stage, and you can find it with a glass of ice water. It’s the old method and it works.
Set out a glass of cold water with a few ice cubes. At around the 8-minute mark:
- Lift a little syrup on a spoon and drop it into the cold water.
- Wait a few seconds, then pick it up with your fingers.
- If it dissolves and you can’t pick it up, it needs longer. Keep boiling and test again in a minute.
- If you can roll it into a soft ball that flattens between your fingers and doesn’t spring back, that’s your moment. Off the heat.
- If the ball comes out hard and brittle, you’ve gone past it. The marshmallows will be denser and chewier, but they’re perfectly good.
Two supporting signs while you wait: the bubbling changes from big lazy bubbles to a fine dense foam, and the syrup visibly thickens when you tilt the pan.
Four places this recipe goes wrong
Picking the wrong size pan. The sweet spot for these quantities is a 2- to 3-quart saucepan, roughly 6½ to 7 inches across and at least 4 inches deep. If yours has the capacity stamped on the base, that’s the number to look for.
If the pan is too wide, the syrup sits in a layer under half an inch deep. It evaporates much faster, so it hits 240°F well before the 10 minutes the recipe calls for, and it won’t cover the bulb of a candy thermometer, which makes the reading unreliable.
If it’s too small, the honey boils over. It foams far more than a plain sugar syrup and can triple in volume or more.
Pouring the syrup too fast. Dumped straight onto a running whisk, 240°F syrup splashes, and it burns. It also sets into hard caramel threads against the cool side of the bowl, which you’ll find later as crunchy bits in your marshmallow. Thin stream, down the side, mixer on low.
Not whipping long enough. Stopping when it “looks white” means it hasn’t taken on enough air or begun to set. The signal isn’t the color, it’s the ribbon: lifting the whisk should pull a thick band that holds its shape on the surface for a moment.
Covering them, or setting them in the fridge. The surface needs to dry in open air to form the thin skin that lets you cut them. Covered or chilled, that moisture stays in and by morning you have a sticky mass you can’t handle.
Why there are no egg whites in this recipe
Plenty of marshmallow recipes whip egg whites separately and fold them in. This one doesn’t need to, and it’s worth knowing why.
Two things can hold the air in a marshmallow: egg white and gelatin. Egg white adds quick volume and a lighter, more meringue-like texture. Gelatin does the real structural work: as it cools it forms a network that traps the bubbles and locks them there for good.
At 16 g of gelatin for this much syrup, you have structure to spare. Egg white would be extra fluff, not a necessity, and in exchange it costs you a second bowl, two leftover yolks and raw egg in something that’s going to sit out on the counter all night.
So these are gelatin marshmallows: denser and springier than the egg-white kind, with more chew and more bounce. Which is exactly the texture everyone pictures when they think of a marshmallow out of the bag.
Cutting and coating them so they don’t stick
Grease a long knife with a paper towel and a few drops of neutral oil, and wipe and re-grease it every four or five cuts. Skip the serrated knife, which crushes instead of cutting. Straight down, clean pull.
For the coating, the classic mix is half cornstarch, half powdered sugar. The cornstarch absorbs surface moisture and the powdered sugar gives you that silky finish you know from store-bought.
Cornstarch on its own works too and comes out less sweet, though the finish is more matte and slightly floury on the bite. Powdered sugar on its own we don’t recommend: sugar pulls moisture out of the marshmallow by osmosis, and within a few hours you’ve got wet sugar.
Put the coating in a bowl, add the cubes in batches, toss, and shake off the excess in a sieve. Coat every side, especially the cut faces, which are the sticky ones.
Storage: room temperature, never the fridge
In an airtight container at room temperature they keep one to two weeks.
Not the fridge. Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it pulls moisture out of the air, and a refrigerator is a damp place: the coating dissolves, the surface sweats and they end up welded together. Honey marshmallows are a little more sensitive to this than the standard sugar kind, so the airtight container matters.
Freezing isn’t worth it either. They don’t spoil, but they weep on thawing and lose the coating.
If they turn sticky on the outside after a few days, give them a second toss in cornstarch and they’re good as new.
Frequently asked questions
Can you make marshmallows without corn syrup?
Yes, and honey is the best substitute. Corn syrup is in classic marshmallow recipes to stop the sugar syrup from recrystallizing and turning gritty, and honey does exactly that job because it’s also a mix of sugars that won’t line up into crystals. It brings flavor too, which corn syrup doesn’t.
Is corn syrup actually bad for you?
Not in the way most recipe blogs imply, and we’d rather be honest about it. Corn syrup is a sugar syrup, and so is the honey in this recipe. Nutritionally there’s much less daylight between them than the internet suggests. The real reason to skip it is that most people don’t keep a bottle around and don’t want to buy one for a single batch of candy.
Are these marshmallows healthy?
No, and it’s worth saying plainly: this recipe uses ⅔ cup of honey, and honey is sugar. What it doesn’t have is corn syrup, artificial flavors or dyes. These are homemade candy made from three ingredients, not a health food.
Do I really need a candy thermometer?
No. A thermometer makes it easier, but the cold water test works and it’s what people used before thermometers existed: drop a little syrup into a glass of ice water and if you can roll it into a soft ball that flattens between your fingers, you’re at 240°F. There’s a full walkthrough in the post above.
Why didn’t my marshmallows set up?
The most likely cause is that the syrup never reached 240°F. Below that there’s too much water left in the mix for the gelatin to hold the foam, so it rises and then sinks back down. The second most common cause is under-whipping: the sign that they’re ready isn’t that they’ve turned white, it’s that the whisk pulls a thick ribbon that sits on the surface before sinking.
How long do homemade marshmallows last?
One to two weeks in an airtight container at room temperature. Don’t refrigerate them: honey pulls in moisture, the coating dissolves and they stick together. If they get tacky on the outside after a few days, toss them in a little more cornstarch and they’re fine.
Can I use beef gelatin instead of pork gelatin?
Yes, and it’s a straight 1:1 swap by weight: 16 g of beef gelatin for 16 g of powdered gelatin. Beef and pork gelatin are both collagen and behave the same way; what matters is the bloom strength, not the animal, and most unflavored powdered gelatin sold for home use sits in the same 200-250 bloom range. If your brand states a much lower bloom, you’ll need a little more.
Worth knowing: most supermarket unflavored gelatin in the US is made from pork, beef, or a blend, and isn’t certified either way. If you need these to be halal or kosher, look for a certified bovine gelatin specifically, because a “grass-fed beef gelatin” label on its own isn’t a certification. Fish gelatin also works and is another route to certified, though it tends to set a little softer, so start with 18 g and adjust.
Can I use maple syrup instead of honey?
Yes, and it works the same way structurally, since maple syrup is also a mixed-sugar syrup that resists crystallizing, so you get the same smooth texture. Swap it 1:1 by weight: 220 g (⅔ cup) of pure maple syrup, and use a dark grade if you want the flavor to come through, since boiling mellows it.
Three things change. The flavor is stronger and unmistakably maple. It browns faster at high heat, so watch the color in the last couple of minutes. And it foams even more enthusiastically than honey, so stay at the top of the pan range: a full 3-quart saucepan rather than a 2-quart.
A 50/50 honey and maple mix is a good middle ground and is what we’d reach for at Christmas.
What kind of honey works best?
A light, mild one: clover, orange blossom, acacia. Boiling to 240°F concentrates and lightly toasts the honey, so a dark, assertive honey (buckwheat, chestnut) gives you a marshmallow with a very dominant flavor that not everyone enjoys, kids especially. Texture-wise any honey works; it’s purely about taste.
Do I need a stand mixer?
A stand mixer is strongly recommended, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise: this is 5 to 10 minutes at high speed, one-handed, while the bowl is hot. A hand mixer will get there, but you’ll be holding it the whole time and some lighter models struggle as the mixture thickens. What won’t work is a whisk by hand.
Whichever you use, check the bowl is heat-safe. The syrup goes in at 240°F and some stand mixer bowls are plastic. Metal is the safe choice.
Can I use these for s’mores?
Absolutely, and they toast beautifully, but watch them closely. Honey is high in fructose, which browns faster than regular sugar, so these color up noticeably quicker than a store-bought marshmallow: what takes ten seconds with a bagged one takes three or four here. Hold them near the embers rather than in the flame. Cut them a little larger than usual so they cover a graham cracker.
Can I use them in Rice Krispie treats?
Yes, and they melt more smoothly than store-bought because there are no stabilizers in them. Use them by weight rather than by the bag, and melt them over low heat, because the honey scorches faster than a commercial marshmallow would. Expect the finished treats to taste faintly of honey, which most people consider an upgrade.
Can I use gelatin sheets instead of powder?
Yes. 16 g of powdered gelatin is about 8 sheets of the 2 g kind. Bloom them in plenty of cold water for 5 to 10 minutes, squeeze them out well with your hands, and put them in the bowl with only 2 or 3 tablespoons of water instead of the full ⅓ cup. Sheets carry water with them, and using the full amount leaves the mixture too loose to set.
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