Season Finale Cinema S’mores

14 of us enjoyed the Cinema Brittahytta season finale on Saturday, including the last special summer dessert…Cinema S’mores! Super 8 is a really fun flick, and we could have started much earlier but enthusiastic chatting & grilling delayed the start time even longer than midsummer light! It makes me grin from ear to ear for everyone to enjoy themselves so much. Thanks to everyone for a fun summer!

I thought filmstrip-shaped Cinema S’mores would be fitting not only for Super 8, about kids making their own movies in 1979, but also for the season finale of my summer movie season. Originally the plan was just to cut out the chocolate to show a blank white “screen” with the sprocket holes, then I thought maybe I could use the countdown 3-2-1 images…but then I got the brainstorm to find iconic frames from all the movies this summer and print them on wafer paper! I could fit 18 images on a single sheet, so all movies had 2 frames, with a couple extras for Close Encounters and Super 8…so this was also a game for people to name the movie.

I also noticed that the attendance fluctuated widely as usual, but two people had come to almost all the movies, so I designed some Cinema Brittahytta Attendance Awards for special graham cracker medals with teal fabric ribbon. I printed these on frosting sheets, but the graham cracker recipe is too puffy and dry for the sheet to bake into the dough as well as it does for my sugar cookies. Lesson learned, but the recipients still ate them!

First I mixed up modeling chocolate using more Hershey’s chips with corn syrup and let it set overnight in the fridge. Melted chocolate wouldn’t allow me to cut sprocket holes, and I didn’t want to make an expensive silicone chocolate mold for only one event. After the modeling chocolate warmed up enough to roll, I cut the chocolate rectangles with enough room for the sprocket holes to be cut with a straw top and bottom, but not actually cutting the holes yet so I could use them as a guide to cut the graham crackers. Yes, this was the same vegan graham cracker recipe as all summer – I should have it memorized by now, but not quite! I probably could have sized the chocolate filmstrips to fit on normal graham cracker rectangles, but now that I’ve made the tasty homemade ones so often, I decided to finish the summer with homemade.

After the dough was all rolled out and the graham crackers were baking, I used a cut-off drinking straw to cut the sprocket holes in the modeling chocolate. Using a full-length straw was harder to keep the end circular without squishing, plus more difficult to aim. To keep using the same straw, I had to push all the chocolate holes out with a smaller straw after every line I cut. The hardest part of all of this was getting the wafer paper to stick to the chocolate. I had thought of cutting the chocolate out of the center frame so the paper film cel would be under the chocolate layer, but then I thought that wouldn’t be enough chocolate for proper s’more flavor balance. Since the wafer paper color didn’t change that much when sitting on the chocolate, I stuck them on, warming the chocolate by rubbing the wafer paper to make contact. That looked to be working through cutting the sprocket holes, but then some started popping up…ack! I tried a little water with my fine food paintbrush as glue, but the wafer paper can dissolve really quickly. I resorted to weight and a flat baking sheet holding them down while they set overnight in the fridge, and that worked okay. I should have just filled a piping bag with marshmallow creme to use as glue!

For final assembly I wanted the sprocket holes to stand out more than just graham cracker tan, so I used marshmallow creme as “already gooey” marshmallows this time. I went back and forth whether to have a clean edge with white only behind the chocolate, or for a more s’more-style mess. It was too hard to aim perfectly so the messy look was decided for me. So they could all be seen at the same time for the movie identification game, I arranged them nine each on two aqua plates on the main table. We didn’t end up roasting any marshmallows after all, so the pre-melted idea worked just fine!

The other idea I had been dying to try for a whole year was fire-roasted grapes. Last year all my grapes split from late-season rain, so I had no harvest at all, but this year has more than made up for it. Friends and I have been enjoying grapes off my six-year-old vines for the past six weeks, and you can see the one single giant bunch among all I picked just on Saturday! I’m very glad this year there have been plenty of grapes to share with the birds & critters in my yard.

Not only did more people come, which was awesome, but they also came earlier than recent movies, so I didn’t have the grill going yet. I had planned for my grapes to go first on a separate grill tray with smaller holes so grapes wouldn’t fall through, but by the time coals were hot enough, people wanted to cook what they brought. The separate grill tray would have taken up the whole grill space, so instead I just crammed the grape bunches directly on the grill. I hadn’t oiled the grill so some stuck, but I was able to turn the whole bunches well enough just by grabbing the stems, covering each time for overall heat, then we had delicious steaming roasted grapes! I liked the ones that had stuck with lovely strong char, but all of them were smoke-infused and slightly caramelized, and everyone was surprised at this new taste sensation!

Everyone was enjoying chatting & grilling & eating so much we didn’t light the firepit or play Rock Band…but when I thought everyone had finally arrived, I called everyone together for a presentation. First I announced that there was one person who only missed one movie night all summer…Glen! He climbed up on my footstool for an Olympic-style medal ceremony to accept his Attendance Award…haha! After the applause & cheering died down, I said, “But there is one person who has attended ALL the movies this year…Sheila!” Even more cheers as Sheila replaced Glen on the ceremonial footstool, and Glen made a goofy disappointed face and slouched as he “only” got second place…hahaha!

Everyone was still enjoying chatting, but I was afraid of the movie running too late, so after approvals of a few people who agreed we should get started, I played the trailers to usher people to take their seats. At least we had the actual movie going by 9:15, which is perfect timing for midsummer when it’s just barely dark, but we could have probably started a whole hour earlier it’s getting dark so soon now! Definitely fall is on the way!

I had filled my plate for moving dining as always, and I picked a Super 9 s’more on purpose…I probably should have tried my real camera instead of my iPhone, but I was very close to getting the same still frame as my s’more! haha…You can click to view the full photo gallery as always.