Mom came over yesterday with a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers and a 6 pack of Hershey bars. She had brought them because 14-year-old Petie had really enjoyed dipping marshmallows in chocolate during our Mother's Day brunch at The Melting Pot. She mentioned that we, having a gas stove, could make S'mores right on the stove.

That was too much temptation for me. I whipped out a bamboo skewer, prepared the chocolate and graham, popped up the flame, and proceeded to char me a marshmallow.

Now, I'm one of those rare adults that likes my marshmallow black on the outside. However, if you burn your marshmallow right away, which is really easy to do over a gas flame, it's still solid in the center - not good for s'mores. Plus, on my first attempt, my bamboo skewer caught fire and I ended up with a burnt bamboo tip in my s'more.

Next try, I held the marshmallow up higher over the flame and it was definitely getting nice and gooey inside and golden on the outside. At that point, I zoomed in for the blackening, and my nice, melted marshmallow plopped right off the skewer and landed on the stove. Plus my bamboo skewer was getting shorter as the tip kept getting burned off.

At this point, I switched to metal skewers with wooden handles made especially for marshmallow roasting (Firemaster Roasting Sticks at Amazon.com), and moved my prepped chocoloate/cracker closer to the toasting site in case of another falling, flaming marshmallow. I turned the flame down to medium, and held the marshmallow about 10 inches above the heat. Within seconds, the skin began to bubble and pucker, and turn golden. I kept rotating the marshmallow until I felt it loosening on the stick. Then I brought it down to the fire, set it ablaze and moved it right to the s'more base. I blew out the flame and topped it with the second graham cracker in the same moment. Voila! The perfect s'more!

(Last night, laying in bed, I got s'mores on the mind, and decided to get up and toast a marshmallow or two. The bag was gone! Petie, our marshmallow lover, had polished off the whole bag.)