My mom almost always had a bag of large marshmallows in a cupboard in the kitchen. I like to eat marshmallows. This post is about some of the marshmallow treats I enjoyed as a kid. As you will see, this about more than Rice Krispie treats.
One treat Mom would make with marshmallows was caramel marshmallow Rice Krispie balls. For this recipe, you melt caramels in a large saucepan. Then roll a marshmallow in the caramel to completely coat the marshmallow. Next roll the caramel coated marshmallow in a bowl of dry Rice Krispies. I don’t remember the name of these treats, but they were fun to make and eat.
My dad was the king of roasting marshmallows over the fire on a stick when we had a wienie (“hot dog”) roast. It was from him I learned the patience of finding a nice bit of coals in the fire and slowly rotating the cooking stick until the marshmallow is nice and puffy and brown. I love to eat roasted marshmallows.
We did not make s’mores very often when we had a wienie roast. I am not sure why, because we almost always had graham crackers in the cupboard in the house. In my memory, we only had s’mores at the Livingston family reunions when we camped on the Snake River. While I will eat a s’more, I don’t like them that much. I would rather just eat the marshmallow off the roasting stick. To me, the work of getting the graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow built into a sandwich is not really worth the effort.
In the late 2000s, Annette and I started taking the kids on camping trips. We would buy Keebler Fudge Stripped Cookies for our camping trips. We found these cookies were easier to use for making s’mores. I like them a little better than traditional s’mores.
Sometimes, Mom would open a bag of marshmallows and would not use all of them for one recipe. After leaving marshmallows in an open bag in the shelf for a while, the marshmallows dry out. I learned that this is a fun way to eat marshmallows. The marshmallows are just a little crunchy but they soften up quickly as you begin chewing them.
Cade and I would sneak some marshmallows out of the bag and hide them on a shelf to intentionally let them dry out and repeat them later. (Cory may have done this also, but my memory is of doing this with Cade.) One fun way to eat a dry marshmallow is to lick one end like a lollipop. We would also put lone marshmallows in the freezer and eat them later.
My last marshmallow treat memory is of marshmallow spread. Every once in a while Mom would buy marshmallow spread that we would eat on our ice cream.
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