S'mores!

Over the last few months, I've had the chance to play with food a little. In order to encourage socializing at church, a friend of mine* decided to start bringing treats--so people could munch on something after church, and mingle. This activity is inventively called munch & mingle (where do people come up with these names?). Somehow I got roped into being the sous-chef for this project--and it's been fun. We've made forays into the realms of orange rolls (and strawberry rolls), pretzels, cream puffs, and the occasional cop-out cookie; but about a month ago was the pièce de résistance. S'mores.

No, wait, you don't understand!

So, we did buy the chocolate. But we made these marshmallows and these graham crackers.

And they ended up looking like this:

And yes, that is a moose. Who may have been nibbled on.

It was a messy project (I think marshmallow goo ended up in a few random places around my kitchen...and on my clothes...and in my hair) but the marshmallows weren't very much work. I did get to see my Kitchenaid beat the marshmallow cream for 12 minutes, on high. That was an impressive sight. (I'm sorry...I'm a total geek. I don't think anyone else gets excited about seeing their mixer work that much.)

The graham crackers were very delicate in dough form, but with a little coaching from one of my cooking mentors** (pictured below) the task of rolling the dough and transferring them to the pan became easier.

*Names have been avoided to protect the guilty. We will call this person A. Wong, or Alex W. for short.
**Those dark marks on her arms are temporary tattoos. No children were bruised in the making of these crackers.