At 5:40 p.m. on Nico's sixth birthday, the thermometer on our back patio said 93 and the radar on my phone showed a purple and red blob sliding in from the west. By 6:15 the first thunder was rattling the screens on the back patio, and by 6:30 the rain was coming sideways across the yard. So much for the campfire.
Nico had asked for one thing this year: s'mores at the fire pit. He's our kindling manager on every trip, and he'd spent a week collecting sticks from under the mango tree into a bucket for his birthday fire. The bucket filled with rainwater in about four minutes. There was a moment where it could have gone badly, and then Maya said, "We could do the fire in the kitchen," and Dana said, "Not a real fire," and that's how the s'mores bar happened.
The kitchen version
Our stove is electric, so there was never going to be an open flame inside. We used two methods:
- The broiler. A sheet pan of graham crackers, chocolate on each, marshmallow on top, under the broiler on high for 60 to 90 seconds with the oven door cracked and an adult standing right there. They come out toasted on top and gooey underneath, close enough to a campfire that nobody complained.
- The microwave. A marshmallow on a graham cracker for about 12 seconds puffs up to three times its size. The kids think this is the greatest science experiment ever performed. It doesn't toast, so it's more of a backup.
We turned off the kitchen lights and put our battery camp lantern in the middle of the table, which sounds silly until you see two kids' faces in that light. Nico said it was "basically camping." I'll take it.
What was on the bar
I did a $34 Publix run after school, and we laid it all out on the counter in rows, which Maya then reorganized into better rows:
- Graham crackers, plus a sleeve of Maria cookies, because Dana's family always has Maria cookies in the pantry
- Milk chocolate bars, a dark chocolate bar, peanut butter cups and one cookies-and-cream bar
- Regular marshmallows, the giant square ones and a bag of strawberry ones Nico picked
- Sliced bananas, strawberries, pretzel sticks, guava paste and a block of cream cheese
Rafael and Marisol drove over from Westchester in the rain, and Dana's brother Javi came with his family, so it was a full kitchen. Six candles went into a tower of three giant marshmallows. Nico blew them out in one breath and then ate the tower.
The combos the kids invented
- Nico's Kindling Special: a Maria cookie, a peanut butter cup, a toasted marshmallow and two pretzel sticks laid on top like logs. He made four of these and named every one of them.
- Maya's Guava Cheesecake: graham cracker, a thin smear of cream cheese, a slice of guava paste and a broiled marshmallow. This was the hit of the night. Rafael ate two, which for him is a speech.
- Marisol's Banana Split: dark chocolate, a banana slice, marshmallow, on a Maria cookie. Grown-up approved.
- The one we won't make again: strawberry marshmallow with the cookies-and-cream bar. Maya said it tasted "like a candle store." She wasn't wrong.
What I'd do differently
I'd stay at the oven. Around the third tray, somebody knocked and I went to the door for less than a minute. That was enough. The marshmallows turned black, the smoke alarm went off, and Pickles shot under our bed and stayed there until the next morning. Broilers don't give you the slow warning a campfire does. From then on, Dana ran the oven and I ran dishes, which is probably how it should have started.
I'd also buy half as many marshmallows. We had 22 left over, and a bag of strawberry marshmallows is not a thing anybody needs in the pantry.
The storm moved off around 8:30. The patio was dripping and steamy, still about 84 degrees, and Nico walked out to the fire pit in his socks, looked at it for a while and said, "Next year a real one." He dumped the rain out of his kindling bucket and lined the sticks up on the patio to dry. They're still there.
