Zefir Recipe with Agar-agar

Marshmallow (known as zefir or zephyr) is a favorite childhood treat for many of those who were born in the USSR. It’s a delicate, airy, sweet dessert that doesn’t contain dairy or gluten. The homemade zefir recipe with agar-agar consists only of fruit puree, egg white, sugar, and agar-agar. With a few cooking secrets, you’ll enjoy a 100% natural dessert and be proud of yourself.

Which fruits can be used in homemade zefir recipe with agar-agar?

For zefir, it’s best to use thick fruit or berry puree, either made from fruits/berries with a high pectin content (such as apple, black currant, some other berries), or heavily cooked, or prepared together with apple puree or with the addition of external pectin. It becomes more difficult to beat the egg white to stiff peaks with thinner fruit puree, and achieving this state is crucial.

Classic zefir is made from apple puree, and I recommend learning on it. Firstly, it’s less expensive, secondly, apple puree is easy to prepare, thirdly, if your zefir doesn’t turn out, you can be almost certain that the reason is likely not in the puree.

The best types of apples for making zefir are sour or sweet-sour: Granny Smith, Antonovka and other green apples. Sweet apples contain insufficient pectin, so zefir with them may not turn out.

The fruits or berries for the puree should be fresh or frozen. Canned, dried, mashed with sugar, or any other preserves won’t work. Except for ready-made fruit and berry purees sold in stores for confectioners – they can be used, it’s very convenient, but also more expensive.

It’s hard to say the exact amount of whole fruits/berries needed to make the exact amount of puree for the recipe. You can take about 200 g of apples or black currants, and more for other fruits and berries, because they will most likely need to be boiled to a thick consistency.

If you end up with more puree than needed, it’s not a problem: you can freeze the leftovers and use them another time for making zefir or something else.

Can I make low-sugar zefir?

In making zefir, sugar plays a role not so much in sweetness as in fixing the beaten egg white. In turn, agar-agar as a gelling agent makes this sweetened egg white even denser and resistant to damage and transportation.

After all my experiments with the amount of sugar, I’ve concluded that 300 grams is the minimum that gives sufficient density to zefir. Less is simply not possible, unfortunately.

Can agar-agar be replaced with gelatin?

Anticipating possible questions about agar-agar in zefir, I immediately answer: it cannot be replaced with anything. There are zefir recipes with gelatin, but there’s a completely different cooking technology, so don’t even try to substitute agar-agar with gelatin in this recipe – it won’t work.

Agar-agar is sold in many supermarkets, confectionery stores, and many spice shops. So, it’s not rare. Working with it is not difficult, the consumption is minimal, so don’t be afraid of the high price, buy in small quantities, literally 25–50 grams, it will last you a long time.

So, how to make zefir with agar-agar?

Ingredients:

apple puree
water (1)
sugar (1)
egg white of higher grade
sugar (2)
agar-agar
water (2)
powdered sugar for rolling

From the specified amount of ingredients, you’ll get 10-20 zefir portions, depending on their size.

Let’s start with preparing the apple puree for zefir

Peel the apples, remove the core, and cut them into small pieces.

Place them in a saucepan or pot, add water(1) to prevent the apples from burning, and cook over low heat, covered.

Stir occasionally and cook the apples until soft.

Remove from heat and blend. For completely smooth consistency, strain the puree through a sieve. Cool it down in the refrigerator.

Puree from any other fruits or berries is prepared similarly, but if necessary, cook it to the desired thick consistency. It’s necessary to cook the strained puree on low heat and constantly stir to prevent burning.

Transfer the prepared puree to a saucepan, add sugar(1), place over medium heat, and cook until the sugar dissolves, there’s no need to bring it to a boil. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

Why is sugar needed in the fruit puree? Some make zefir without adding sugar at this stage to save time and effort. However, sugar is necessary and important technologically when beating the egg white with fruit puree because it stabilizes the structure of the beaten egg white and prevents it from collapsing when adding agar-agar syrup.

Additionally, adding sugar reduces the likelihood of overwhipping the egg white and, as a result, obtaining a liquid mass. And one more bonus: sugar thickens the fruit/berry puree even more.

Whipping the egg white with apple puree

In a mixing bowl (clean, dry, without a single drop of fat, so separate the egg white very carefully from the yolk), combine the cooled sweetened apple puree and an egg white. The temperature of the egg white is not crucial, as it quickly reaches the temperature of the puree when combined with a large amount of puree.

There are 2 options depending on your mixer – handheld or stand mixer (fixed and can work autonomously, without your participation).

If you have a handheld mixer, beat the puree with the egg white before cooking the syrup (the saucepan with the weighed ingredients for the syrup should be ready). Beat until stiff peaks form, which may take up to 10 minutes. Then set aside the beaten mixture and immediately start boiling the syrup.

If you have a stand mixer, start beating the puree with the egg white approximately when the syrup starts boiling because both beating and syrup boiling take about 4–5 minutes. But it depends on the power of your mixer (maybe it beats the egg white longer than 4 minutes).

Now let’s prepare the agar-agar syrup

Mix well sugar(2) with agar-agar. Pour water into a saucepan and add the sugar and agar-agar mixture, place over medium heat and cook, stirring slightly.

From the moment the syrup boils, stir it very actively. It will start foaming heavily and rising up (take this into account when choosing a saucepan for boiling syrup).

Cook the syrup for about 4 minutes. I usually time it with a timer.

Initially, the syrup will drip from the spoon like water, and there will be many large bubbles in the saucepan that quickly and easily burst. Then the bubbles will become smaller and burst slower, which means the syrup is thickening, and when it stretches from the spoon like a thin sticky thread (somewhere compared to a snot, excuse me 🙂 ), the syrup is ready. This takes 4–5 minutes.

According to the basic recipe, the syrup should be boiled to a certain temperature – 110ºC. But I’m used to managing without a thermometer.

I recommend using a wooden spoon for stirring – it has better grip with the syrup, so it’s easier to determine its consistency.

Whipping the zefir mass

At this stage, we combine both masses: agar-agar syrup and apple & egg white mixture.

If you have a handheld mixer, place the mixing bowl on a non-slip surface, such as a silicone mat. This way, the bowl won’t rotate with the mixer if you’re not holding it by hand, and you won’t be able to hold it because in your other hand, you have the saucepan with the syrup.

So, remove the syrup from the heat when it’s ready, turn on the mixer to medium speed, and while beating the puree with the egg white, pour the syrup in a thin stream along the wall of the bowl.

Important! Don’t scrape the remaining syrup from the saucepan, just set it aside and continue beating the marshmallow mass.

With a stand mixer, the process is the same, just without turning off the mixer while boiling the syrup – everything happens simultaneously. By the time the syrup is ready, the egg white mixture in the mixer should be beaten to stiff peaks. Reduce the speed slightly below medium (for me, it’s marked 4 out of 10) and pour the syrup in a thin stream along the wall, then increase the speed slightly above medium.

After adding the syrup, beat the mass for about 4–5 minutes. As a result, it will cool slightly and noticeably thicken. You should be comfortable touching the mixer bowl, but it should be warm.

Agar-agar starts to set already at a temperature of 40°C, so don’t wait for the marshmallow mass to cool, work with it warm.

Congratulations, the hardest part is behind!

Transfer the marshmallow mass to a pastry bag with a nozzle (I use K855), pipe out the zefir halves onto parchment paper, and let them set at room temperature for 4–12 hours.

After setting, join the halves, roll them in powdered sugar – that’s it, zefir is ready. Enjoy and be amazed at how much tastier and more natural it is compared to store-bought marshmallow!

Store zefir in an airtight container, preferably for no more than 2–3 days, otherwise, it will start to dry out and become lumpy. You can read about how to make zefir with an extended shelf life in my next zefir recipe.

So, now let’s go through possible mistakes and reasons if zefir didn’t turn out

1. Zefir didn’t set. Possible reasons:

• insufficiently beaten egg white with puree (not beaten for enough time or some fat got into the egg white, for example, the yolk, or the puree was too liquid)
• undercooked syrup
• insufficient pectin in the puree
• low-quality agar-agar

2. The syrup formed lumps in the marshmallow mass:

• the syrup was overcooked

3. The marshmallow mass is too thick:

• the mass was beaten too long after adding the syrup, it cooled too much, and the agar-agar had already started working

4. The marshmallow set, but is moist inside:

• see point 1

And the most important recommendation, not even a good advice: wash the dishes IMMEDIATELY after making the marshmallow; otherwise, it will be extremely difficult later 😉