A couple of throbbing sweet teeth and a house that hasn’t seen a proper bowl of ice cream all summer gave rise to a delicious battle Saturday night and the winners and still the champs turned out to be two innocent spectators, Katherine and me.
If Plato did say that necessity is the mother of invention, I believe he was talking about dessert.
It all happened around a somewhat pitiful fire pit in our tiny backyard patio. While Katherine and I toasted the mellow end of a nearly perfect extended Fourth of July weekend, Molly decided to toast a banana.
Had I stocked our pantry with normal summer supplies, we would have contented ourselves with S’mores that fateful night — a delicious marshmallowy treat, to be sure, but awfully common, no?
Fortunately, I had not stocked our pantry at all. I’ll be honest, we don’t even have a pantry.
So Molly speared a banana, lightly buttered it, rolled it in cinnamon and brown sugar and patiently toasted it over a sporadic flame. Idly, I snapped a few pictures.
Oh. My. Culinary. Goodness.
That toasted banana turned out to be delicious. We called for more but, alas, that single, brave banana turned out to be our last.
“I’ll toast an apple!” Molly announced.
Her father smelled a challenge and followed her into the kitchen to gather supplies.
Meanwhile, Katherine and I high fived and waited for the magic to happen.
Molly peeled her apple, prepared it in a similar fashion to her banana with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, speared and roasted it, turning it every so often to bake it evenly.
Vince, her father, appeared with sliced apples, in a pan, dotted with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and fresh raspberries.
Then he sacrificed the tender skin on his knee caps to hold that pan over the open flame until the juices sizzled and apples browned.
Our backyard smelled like apple pie as the contestants sweated over the open flames.
Of course we called the contest a draw, all three dessert tasted fantastic and, as I noted above, the real winners were the judges anyway.
Fortunately the summer is still young and there are plenty of obscure treats to roast.
So bring on the hot summer starry skied evenings, the crackling campfires and the family challenges. We want S’more!
