Indoor S'more

This winter has brought the return of dessert into our household, as I suppose most winter's tend to do. The main problem I have with keeping sweets in the house, is that if they're not around I have no problem shutting them out of my mind, unless they've been on the menu recently, in which case their absence becomes problematic. We've been treating ourselves to tea and dark chocolate in the evenings, but wound up short on supplies during a recent scrabble battle. Actually, we really hadn't had chocolate regularly, or in such large amounts, until after the Empty Quarter trip. Ness had bought fallout shelter like quantities of S'more ingredients in anticipation of colonizing our non-American friends with this sticky treat. Had we somehow found ourselves separated from the group, we might have of survived for weeks on end eating nothing but chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers.

So, when we returned from the desert with a surplus of S'more fixings, the chocolate, once recovered from the sun by a stint in the freezer, was the first to go. As I said, I have excellent self control when it comes to things that require effort to procure. But, load the refrigerator with pumpkin pie, and I'll help you unload it in short order. This tendency left a disconcerting horde of marshmallows and graham crackers on hand, and my initial inclination to polish off the grahams with my lunchtime bowl of soup has been vetoed by the powers that be. Yet when it came to light that we were in dire need of dessert, we improvised a somewhat satisfying brand of chocolate-less S'mores over candlelight. 

While wooden popsicle sticks do make excellent skewers for this purpose, it's worth noting that they are a good deal more flammable than their more densely compacted cousin, the wooden bbq skewer. Also, attaining the subtly roasted shades of marshmallow that I remember from my family's many excellent cabin trips, has proven impossible over both coals and candle, and may in fact require a proper open flame. Still, there's something pretty satisfying about roasting a dessert food on your kitchen counter, and you don't have to own a chef's torch or a gas range to make it happen. If you can manage it, I'd recommend that you save some chocolate for this purpose, as the marshmallow and graham cracker version feels a little desperate going down.