How to Not Make Spackle: A Mother's Day Story

Note: My mother was an amazing cook. She was not professionally trained, nor did she have at her disposal a host of Whole Foods and Sur La Tables to help her out. But she prepared great-tasting food for our family and even better tasting dessert. But every so often, even the best cooks have an off day.

Rare was the dinner/evening meal when my family didn't have dessert. I come from a long line of bakers and cooks who believed wholeheartedly a meal is not a meal without a dessert option (or two).

A dessert, by definition, did not have to be baked. Since our house in Southern Illinois did not have air conditioning, quite often the summer desserts were ice cream or at least based on ice cream.

On a particularly hot evening, when I was probably 12 or 13 years old, Mom and I found ourselves in the kitchen hunting up dessert. What we had was a half-gallon container of vanilla ice cream. Plain. Boring. Vanilla ice cream.

Being a teenager (or nearly), I of course went into complaint mode: "That's IT?? No strawberries, no hot fudge sauce?" My mother opened the cupboards but there wasn't much there that inspired creativity. Normally, when confronted with plain vanilla ice cream, my Mother would whip up a batch of homemade hot fudge sauce, a staple recipe in our home. But we were out of some key ingredient for that and had to keep looking. Eventually, Mom found a bag of puffed marshmallows - the kind we kept on hand to make S'mores on nights when we grilled outside.

Knowing my fondness for all things marshmallow, my Mom proposed that she and I set out to make marshmallow topping. We had no recipe and no experience. In short, we had no clue. But experimenting in the kitchen is what it's all about so we were undaunted in our desire to make what could easily be purchased at the store. Seriously, how hard could it be???

We put a small pan on the stove, lit a low flame underneath, and dumped half the bag of marshmallows into it. Then we waited, excited by our creation. Rather quickly, the marshmallows melted and it was my job to stir. Things were looking pretty good but we realized the marshmallows could not be served hot and they would in all likelihood re-solidify when cooled, so Mom threw some butter in the pot and I continued to stir.

Soon, the mixture resembled the marshmallow topping one can buy at any grocery store. We were thrilled. Turning off the stove, we set the mixture aside and got out the bowls. The other members of my family hate marshmallow, so we served them the plain ice cream first, which allowed the marshmallow/butter mixture to cool. And harden. And begin to resemble something like, well, Spackle. You know, the stuff you use to when you hang drywall?

Our enthusiasm waned, but did not disappear. My Mom grabbed a regular soup spoon and scooped some of the marshmallow mixture out of the pot. It required some effort on her part before she was able to place a tablespoon's worth of the goo into an ice cream bowl.

So I tried, and learned firsthand that moving the goo out of the pot required a CONSIDERABLE amount of effort the more it cooled. By the time we dumped a healthy scoop of ice cream on it, the mixture was hardening like newly molded plastic. The cold ice cream cemented it completely to the point where we could pick it up and hold it like an object, rather than as something to be eaten.

Needless to say, we threw the pot in a sink of very hot water (the only thing to melt the goo) and ate the ice cream plain. While we had a rather dull dessert that night, we had gained a story my Mother and I would share for years.

This recipe is for the moms out there who are willing to try to make a bowl of ice cream more interesting on a hot summer day. Happy Mother's Day.

Hot Fudge Sauce

In a pot on the stove over low heat, combine:

• 4 oz. cooking chocolate (semi-sweet or unsweetened)
• 2 cups confectioner's sugar
• One 5 oz. can of evaporated milk

Stir constantly to remove lumps from sugar. When all is combined thoroughly, add 3 TBS butter or margarine. When that is fully incorporated, add 1/8 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Mix and serve immediately.

The sauce will keep in a plastic container in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, but will harden a bit. To soften, simply re-heat on stove (you may need to add a little milk) or scoop a generous helping in the bottom of an ice cream bowl, microwave on medium power until sauce is melty, and scoop ice cream on top for an inverted sundae.