marshmallow – The Witty Child

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to go to camp. I suspect this is because one or two of my classmates did, and it sounded like the height of summer fun. Did the reality of sleeping in a cabin with seven randos, sharing communal bathrooms, and not having my bed or cat or toys/books/stuff occur to me? It did not, and so it’s probably better for all involved that my parents tuned out this particular passing fancy of mine. I don’t go outside…or swim…or enjoy sports…really, this would have been a terrible idea, and popular culture backs me up.

Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood by Ellen Conford – Melanie gets bullied by a cabinmate and her horse tries to drown her. (I’m really showing my bias here: horses terrify me, and in her place, if the drowning didn’t get me the absolute cardiac arrest would have.)
I Want to Go Home by Gordon Korman – Rudy can’t escape Camp Algonkian to save his life, but because I’m not experiencing it personally, I can laugh at it. Please read this one if you get the chance.
“Kamp Krusty”, S4 ep1 of The Simpsons – Bart and Lisa get sent to the eponymous camp where they’re fed gruel and forced to make wallets for export. This is made up for (maybe?) by a trip to Tijuana; maybe it was easier to sneak across the border with a busload of kids who probably didn’t have passports on them in 1992.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Dolores is sent to camp, from which she is retrieved by her newly-minted pedo of a stepfather who kidnaps her and keeps her isolated from everyone and everything.

To summarize: very happy, in hindsight, to not have gone to camp. Who needs the colour wars, the singalongs, or…the s’mores. Sigh. The s’mores.

My baking buddy and I decided we could definitely do this ourselves, no campfire or mosquitoes necessary.

We started out with marshmallows and chocolate-dipped cookies, figuring they’d be easier to deal with than graham crackers and a chunk of chocolate. Also, the box itself exhorts their suitability for s’mores, so who were we to question that? We found a kitchen torch on sale to get that toasty outside crust on the marshmallows.

We weren’t sure how long it would take to toast them using the torch, or if they’d get soft enough on the inside, or if we’d use all our butane, so we hastened the process by microwaving them for a few seconds first, just to soften them up a bit.

We speared two at a time on a regular fork and had at ‘er with the torch. They toasted up fairly quickly (making me think we were right to pre-soften them) and absolutely caught on fire more than once.

It was a bit of a trick to get them off the fork – once the flame was turned off, they congealed pretty quickly – but two marshmallows made the perfect fluffy layer between our cookies. Unfortunately, because they had cooled a bit, they didn’t melt the chocolate so well…

…until we stuck the assembled s’mores back in the microwave for a few more seconds to soften everything up.

These were a great, no-bake summer dessert. And with most of a bag of marshmallows and a whole bunch of butane left, I think we’ll be making these again. Who needs to sleep on a cot just to get them?

Thanks for looking! 🙂

So, I recently left a job after more than two-and-a-half years for greener pastures. I’m excited about the type of work, pay scale, etc. – but am I ever going to miss the people at my old job! Everybody was so sweet to me on my last day: one girl brought me a cinnamon roll/croissant hybrid from Starbucks to have with my morning coffee, and later that afternoon my boss took me out for a donut glut (lookin’ at you, root beer glaze!). By the end of the day, I felt admittedly a little unwell and rather full of pastry, but also loved. And so because food obviously equals love, I wanted to bake a little something over the weekend and do a desk-drop Monday morning for some of my nearest and dearest. (This isn’t quite as creepy and stalker-ish as it sounds; I’m still working in the same building, so no security guards had to be alerted to escort me from the premises.) I had mulled over margarita cupcakes, or faux-Hostess cupcakes, but didn’t want to lug six individual cupcake boxes around. But ah, the Marshmallow Crunch Brownie Bars from the Brown Eyed Baker sounded like a winner.

I did have my reservations, as I’ve had mixed results with some of her recipes in the past. My solution? I used my own fail-proof brownie recipe for the base before proceeding as directed.

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(Hot tip, kids: always, always line bar-cookie pans with aluminum foil before greasing, and cleanup will be a snap.)

After all, if I could nail the brownie part, how hard could it be to sprinkle marshmallows and melt some chocolate and peanut butter together?

The answer: just a little harder than I thought. I had expected the marshmallows to melt into an even layer rather than just puff up (it’s been a long time since I’ve microwaved a Peep, okay?), and they created a bit of a retaining wall for my crispy chocolate mixture. My test audience was obviously going to be sampling squares from the centre.

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I didn’t get quite the perfectly delineated layers seen in her photos, but aesthetics aside, it’s not a big deal. These are moist and fudgy, and surprisingly neat to eat. (And trust me on that. I hate getting my fingers sticky, so if I can eat these and not immediately freak out, anyone can.)

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All packaged up and ready to go!

These are seriously easy and tasty, and would make a wonderful addition to a potluck or bake sale. My afternoon was filled with IMs from my peeps squealing over the fudginess.

Happy Monday, and thanks for looking! 🙂

Tag: marshmallow

But marshmallows aren’t supposed to crunch…