Let's fisk a S'Mores recipe

This might be an Internet first - fisking a recipe. Or it might not. I'm too lazy to Google around and see what turns up.

On the great homeschooler campout of 2005 - we stumbled into this recipe for S'Mores on the inside of a package of Hershey Bars. It was damn funny a couple of beers into the evening, and it's still pretty ridiculous 4 days later.

First, Hershey provides the ingredients

4 graham crackers, broken into halves. 2 Hershey Milk Chocolate Bars (1.55 oz.) unwrapped and broken into halves. 4 marshmallows.

For people so dumb that we need a recipe for S'Mores, this ingredient list is inadequate. They felt the need to tell us to unwrap the candy bars, yet didn't bother to specify in which direction the candy bars or crackers should be halved. Do you break them across the middle horizontally or vertically? Does it matter if you do the crackers one way and the candy bar another? I actually don't eat S'Mores (I hate marshmallow) so I can't comment on the appropriateness of the quantities. Is 4 marshmallows enough? Come to think of it, they don't specify full size marshmallows. What if you use the mini marshmallows? How many of those would you need?

If you are going to treat your customers like idiots, at least do a thorough job of it.

Continuing to the actual preparation instructions for outdoor S'Mores.

...place half of a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar onto a graham cracker half. Carefully toast a marshmallow over a grill or campfire (supervise the kids if they are doing this part of the recipe). After the marshmallow is toasted, place it on top of the chocolate bar half. Top it with the second graham cracker half and gently pres it together. Repeat for each serving. Serve immediately. 4 servings.

Have these people ever actually made a S'More over a campfire? Where are the flaming marshmallows? Flaming marshmallows are an integral part of the S'More construction process. If you don't burn a few marshmallows as a sacrifice to the snack Gods, very bad things can happen.

Also, if we are dumb enough to need this recipe, we need a much more explicit safety warning. Hershey's lawyers were totally asleep on this one. Not once are we warned that the S'More may be hot. There is no warning against sticking flaming marshmallows in your mouth or on any other body part. There is no explicit instruction to place the marshmallow on a stick or skewer. Following the recipe could lead you to hold your hand over the fire as you attempt to toast your marshmallow. That would hurt.

We also learned that when making S'Mores, only real Nabisco brand graham crackers will do.The generics, particularly the WalMart brand, taste like cardboard. According to the kids, they burn sort of like cardboard too.