Party treats | Excursions

My daughter had a roasted marshmallow collection. I liked it the best of all her collections. But it’s a tough call.

Her feather collection was neat, too. I remember one tiny feather, and the way her small fingers pincer gripped it in a meadow where it hid, trying to pretend to be a blade of grass. We were out hiking. As soon as my daughter spied the feather; she captured it.

She organized her collection of feathers by sticking them into a repurposed block of styrofoam. We knew the blue jay’s feather, but everything else was known as biggest, smallest, tiniest, prettiest, coolest, best polka dots, best stripes. The collection is still on display in the library upstairs.

Her roasted marshmallow collection, though, was unique. She started it when she was in third or fourth grade because by then she was a champion marshmallow roaster.

Marshmallow roasting–real marshmallow roasting–inspires a life-long appreciation for patience. The fire has to be just right. (Use glowing coals, not flames.) The stick has to be just right. (Au natural, native to the campfire location, tip nicely cleaned with a few swipes of a jackknife.) And the marshmallows can’t be knock offs. (Jet-Puffed.)

At our campsites, the kids chopped the wood and built the fires. It was a wild thrill for them to be able to swing the axe, especially if they brought friends who never got to go camping. We had some good competitions setting logs up on a stump and waiting to see who could split them with one slam. There were a lot of strikes, but that just made the kids more determined to figure it out. Wood chopping uses the same tricks as baseball and golf–you gotta keep your eye on the ball–and, you have to keep your grip tight on the axe. We never lost any fingers or toes or arms or legs. Or noses. No eyes ever got poked out with the marshmallow sticks. No one’s hair ever went up in flames once the campfire started to roar. I’ll always be grateful to the gypsy winds for blowing fair through our camps.

So, my daughter’s Perfectly Roasted Marshmallow Collection was dedicated to preserving marshmallows that had been slow turned over the campfire coals just right–until a brown as soft as my daughter’s sun-tanned skin appeared–and then–ever so carefully–only for a few more turns beyond, in order to form a coating of delicate crunch. All gypsies admire excellence in the campfire arts.

Marshmallow roasting is a many-splendored thing. During one excursion to find the perfect stick, my daughter was led astray into a thicket on the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont. She claims a flash of light distracted her and seduced her curiosity. Into the thicket she went as the sun set. I thought she was lost, but before panic stopped my heart, I heard her gleeful shouts and, soon after, I saw the silhouette of my little girl, back lit by the last glows of the day, leaping up and down. She had come upon the nearly-complete skeleton of a deer and when she showed me where it was, I couldn’t figure out how in the world she had ever crawled into such a tangled hedgerow. We braided the vertebrae onto a rope and marveled at how precisely they connected, one to the other. You can read all about how the world was made, but when your daughter finds a deer skeleton and you play around with it like a puzzle, suddenly the hand of God strokes your soul.

Here’s a simple way to make chocolate-covered marshmallows, sans the fuss of a campout. They are surprisingly fun to eat and there’s no waste–you eat the stick, too.

1. Put sturdy pretzel sticks into big marshmallows and line them up on parchment on a tray. I used Snyder’s pretzel sticks–not the skinny ones. You want some heft.

2. Set up bowls of decorating bling.

3. Rig up a double boiler. (I put a stainless steel bowl over a pot of water.) Break up a bar of dark chocolate–I used 70% dark, but you could use semi-sweet, too. I used one bar and it coated about twenty marshmallows.

4. Melt the chocolate and dip the marshmallows. You can dunk them or dip them.

5. Dab and dress the marshmallows up with chosen accessories. Here’s my version of desirable food porn:

6. Let the chocolate set outside if it’s wintertime and you live in a wonderfully wintry place. Keep a close eye out for bandits! Only takes a few minutes for the cold to roast the chocolate and create that perfect coating of crunch.

7. Check them out!