Quest for s’mores

On this, the Fourth of July, my stomach is all-in on the staples of summer food. Sorry local pancake breakfast, you’re just not the reason for the season.

Nothing says “summer” like meat on a grill, of course. When you don’t have or can’t use a proper grill, there are relatively easy alternatives to get your meat on. But without an open flame, some other delicacies are harder to come by.

So today, I hunt the elusive S’more… trying to find a way to prepare it that’ll make a passing resemblance a proper blaze.

Experiment 1: Microwaved

Thirty seconds in a low-ish power microwave is not sufficient to kill marshmallows. This is demonstrated by their ability to respond to the dangerous change in environment using their species’ traditional defense mechanism. Like a cat, the wild marshmallow puffs itself up, creating the illusion of an increased size to make predators question what advantage they have in challenging the marshmallow.

Unfortunately, while marshmallow physiology can handle a gradual increase in temperature, the immediate and sharp decrease in temperature after being removed from the microwave produces more shock than their bodies can take, and they are unable to maintain their puffed-up state.

If they weren’t dead already, slamming the top graham crackers on them causes more than enough bludgeoning damage to put them out of their misery.

Using this method, the chocolate doesn’t look any different, but you’ll quickly find out it liquified. The graham cracker doesn’t change much and while the marshmallow is sufficiently gooey, it’s in no way singed as a proper fire would have.

Experiment 2: The George Foreman

I figured there’s no sense delaying what is probably the stupidest idea of the bunch. On the assumption that what’s good for the gander is good for the goose, perhaps I could make a reasonable facsimile of a s’more the same way I get reasonable facsimiles of grilled dogs and burgers.

(Of course, I don’t really want a hot dog-flavored s’more, so a thorough cleaning was in order first.)

After two minutes of grilling, I popped up the lid to see how things were going. And they weren’t. No part of the s’more looked cooked at all. So back in it went for another 5 minutes. Finally cooked, I pried it out with a flipper and had a look.

I liked the grill marks on the graham cracker, though seeing as I’ve used the George Foreman as a glorified panini maker before, it should have been no surprise. The chocolate and marshmallow were so melted as to be completely mixed together. However, they did little to cement the s’more together; the crackers were sliding all over the place.

Experiment 3: The Toaster Oven

I didn’t want to take many chances, so I used one of the toast settings rather than the oven settings. While the George Foreman took its sweet time, I didn’t think that would be the case here. Besides, if one of the toasting settings works well, it would be easy to replicate the results.

I wanted to cook the full s’more like I did with the george Foreman, but I just couldn’t keep the top cracker balanced on this one. However, there was good luck in this bad motor skills luck.

Setting the toaster directly in between “medium” and “dark,” I managed to burn the top of the marshmallow without melting anything so much that it flowed off the graham cracker. Success?

It was weird having a pristine graham cracker on one side and a baked cracker on the other, but the slight crunch of a fire-toasted marshmallow made it a trifling concern.

Now I just need to find a way to emulate the little pieces of bark normally left behind from poking it with a stick…