The Great Indoors

On Friday, I went out and bought a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and a bar of Hershey's Milk Chocolate, since A CERTAIN PERSON was going to make s'mores with me, but THAT CERTAIN PERSON had to run to get her train, leaving the s'mores unmade. So I took this opportunity to experiment with two types of indoor s'mores.

For the first s'more, I placed a marshmallow on one half of a graham cracker, put a block of the chocolate on top, and put the other half of the graham cracker on top. I then placed the whole shebang in the toaster oven, set at 300 degrees, and baked for around three minutes. I must say, the result was no fun at all -- the chocolate melted and made a gooey mess; the graham cracker burned my fingers; and worst of all, the marshmallow didn't melt, but rather just got a wee bit soft. In sum: totally unsatisfactory.

For the next s'more, I put the marshmallow on a long fork, turned on the stove burner, and toasted the marshmallow. (I have a gas stove, but I used to toast marshmallows over my parents' electric range when I was a kid.) The only problem was that toasting a marshmallow over a gas stove makes the marshmallow hotter than when you toast it over a bonfire, presumably because the marshmallow is closer to the flame, so that the marshmallow kept bursting into flames. But all was well, as I quickly lapsed into the old Girl Scout trick of blowing the marshmallow out. Once the marshmallow was toasted to a nice black/brown, I put it between the graham crackers with the chocolate. Mmmmmmm -- nearly perfect s'morey goodness.

The verdict: the stove method wins, no contest.