Indoor No-Bake S'Mores Bars

Back on June 19, the Serious Eats website published a treasure trove of No Bake Summer Dessert Recipes that caught my attention. For those of you that are geographically challenged, Florida gets mighty hot this time of year owing to its location in the tropics, so any time I can avoid turning on the oven in the Canteen, it's a good thing. The perfect opportunity for me to try out one of these recipes came around when my sister and her family (which includes a very hungry teenager, a near-teen, and a 9-year old with a second stomach) came to Tampa for a visit. Perusing through the list, I decided to attempt the Indoor No-Bake S'Mores Bars as part of a cookout (think hot dogs and hamburgers, much like one would find at a camping meal where actual s'mores would be prepared via bonfire). The Serious Eats people maintain that this is an easy dish to prepare and they're right. To make the crust, you simply combine a whole box of Keebler graham cracker crumbs (which equates to about 14 oz.) with some brown sugar, a little salt, and a bit of water, along with what seems like an unholy amount of melted butter (13 Tbsp., to be exact) until you realize that it's distributed over the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Then you melt the chocolate chips (I used dark instead of bittersweet) in the microwave, mix in 1 c. heavy cream, and spread the resulting slurry over the crust, topping the whole shebang with a covering of mini-marshmallows (I passed on the smoked salt). After 30 minutes of chilling in the refrigerator, the marshmallows can be roasted by either using the oven's broiler setting or using a handheld blowtorch (like the kind for creme brulee), or if you're extremely patient, you take a long lighter and individually torch each marshmallow (which is what we did) until the recipient is pleased with the level of caramelization on their slice. I'd show pictures of the final dish; however, it disappeared so fast, there were none taken. If you have children and no oven (or the desire to leave it off), I highly recommend this dessert...