S’more Cookie Bars August 10
It just wouldn’t be right to celebrate National S’mores Day without making a couple of s’mores - or at least using the concept of the s’more as a jumping off point for something equally delicious. This bar cookie is a variation on the classic s’more. Instead of sandwiching marshmallow and chocolate in between two graham crackers, or even between two cookies, the fillings are baked right along with the cookie dough. The result is a bar with the gooey, sweet filling that we all know and love and a buttery, chewy, graham-flavored cookie surrounding it. It’s obviously a s’more, but I’m willing to bet that you haven’t had a s’more that tastes quite like this before.
The dough is a fairly standard cookie dough, but graham cracker crumbs are added in to give it a graham cracker flavor. It’s a crucial component of the classic s’more and it’s a nice touch in this recipe. Once mixed up, it is divided in half and pressed into the pan to form a crust. The bottom crust is layered with chocolate and marshmallow, then topped with the remaining dough. It’s close to impossible to spread the dough over the marshmallow and I achieved an even upper crust by flattening small pieces of dough and placing them, like a puzzle, gently on top of the marshmallow.
Speaking of the marshmallow, the puffed kind doesn’t hold up inside this bar cookie. You really need to use marshmallow creme or marshmallow fluff, which can be easily spread on top of the chocolate and can withstand the heat of the oven during baking. I stuck with Hershey’s as the chocolate, since that was always the standard s’more chocolate when I was little. Plus, the king sized Hershey’s bars are the perfect size to fit into the baking pan for an even layer of chocolate.
The bars can be eaten slightly warm (and gooey) or at room temperature, though I would lean towards room temperature for ease of slicing and being able to eat without making a huge mess. They taste and smell amazing and are crazily addictive, so be forewarned that you might be tempted to eat a second one before you are done with the first.
S’More Cookie Bars
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs*
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 king-sized milk chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s)
1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan.
Place chocolate bars over dough. 2 king-sized Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick.
Spread chocolate with marshmallow creme or fluff.
Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together).
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned.
Cool completely before cutting into bars
Makes 16 cookie bars.
*Note: 3/4 cup crumbs is approx 7 full-sized graham cracker sheets, whizzed in the food processor until fine.
May Aug 10
OMG, that pic looks so delicious and inviting! Thank you for your detailed recipe notes. If I had marshmallows, I would make this right now! I am filing this under “Must try soon!”
Marichelle Aug 10
You are awful! That looks sooooooo good, it’s still summer and I still need to get into bathing suits =)
First the Dark Chocolate Muffins, then the Parmesan Tomato Tart and now this. I hope you don’t mind but I posted the pic of the tomato tart and a link to your site. Thanks for all the great recipes!!
Christina Aug 10
Wow, I wasn’t able to read some of the posts earlier and I come back to find a picture of deliciousness!
JEP Aug 10
What oz size is “king-size”?
meeso Aug 11
Oh WOW…these look and sound very good, even better than original smores!
Barbara Aug 11
I can’t wait to try these, they look delicious, thanks for sharing! I am going to try pressing 1/2 the dough into the pan on a layer of parchment then remove and set that dough aside to fit on top instead of pressing smaller pieces together.
Nicole Aug 11
“King size” is a five-ounce chocolate bar that is about 1/4 inch thick. It seems to be fairly standard (at, say, grocery stores in the US) throughout the Hershey’s product line. They fit the pan perfectly, although you can certainly use other sizes/brands of chocolate.
Jen Aug 12
if i cannot find graham crackers in the uk(i will look) any ideas for what to use instead anyone??
Em Aug 13
Jen, I would imagine that an equal amount of crushed plain digestive biscuits would work instead of the graham crackers.
Gigi Aug 13
Good grief…these look soooo good! I’m a vegetarian and regular marshmallows are a no-no for me since they contain gelatin. Imagine my excitement when I read the recipe and saw the marshmallow layer was made with marshmallow fluff which, oddly enough, is vegetarian-friendly!
I think I’ll make these on a day when someone else is home to chaperone me. Otherwise, I may eat the entire batch and deny they ever existed.
Stacey Aug 14
I made these last night and they are out of this world! Much richer than I expected, but king-sized chocolate bars are thick!
Loved them!!!!
fethiye Aug 14
amazingly easy to make and amazingly rich/good!
Sarah Aug 15
I made these for my family before making huge quantities for a family gathering — they were a HUGE success!
I couldn’t find king sized bars so I used regular sized Hershey bars and broke them to fit in my pan, worked fine. I used store bought marshmellow fluff in my trial run, but just couldn’t stand the idea of paying almost $4/jar so I found a recipe (simple!) and made my own. It was SOOOO easy — and yummy too!
fran Aug 16
I really want to try this recipe but I have BIG problem. I live in Chile and here we have tons of different marshmellows, but I have never seen marshmellow cream or fluff!
is there any way I can use just regular marshmellows??
I miss s’mores so muuch. I ate tons of them while I was in the States xD
Coleman Aug 18
hi i enjoyed the read
Mariah Aug 28
I made these today for a meeting tonight, and I have already tried the final product. They were SO yummy! I do think next time I will not make the top layer so thick….I’ll use 3/4 of the dough for the bottom and sprinkle the remainder over the top sort of like a strusel….becoming what I invision as more of a topped blondie than a cookie bar….but that is only because I found my “top cookie” sort of soaked up some of the marshmallow creme (my fave par of smores is the marshmallow).
The recipe is so fantastic though…thanks so much for posting it!
cst Sep 2
These were absolutely delicious! A true “comfort food” treat. I really enjoy your blog - keep baking!!
Kathy Sep 16
These were awsome,Just like the real thing, once you have one you need s’more. I’ve already made them a couple times and my family is requesting them again. I tried them with hersey milk choclate bars & special dark chocolate bars, I haven’t decied which version I like best. It just means I’ll have to make s’more. I used regular size bars not king size bars.
I love this, blog!
co Sep 29
I just wanted to mention that the five oz. Hershey bars are NOT the ones labeled “King Size”, as I learned today when I bought the wrong size and had to go pick up more. King Size is the 2.6 oz bar (one step up from the normal size). The 5 oz bar (which appears to be the one called for in this recipe) is twice as big and, yes, two of them would fit very nicely in a 8-9 inch baking pan.
Cole Oct 9
Oh My! What a tastey treat! I think i baked mine a bit long because it was kinda tough, but still tasted great! Hubby loved it too!
nin Oct 10
Hi,
actually it looks like an image from an old East German cook book.
Nin
Trisha Oct 12
What a fantastic recipe.
I doubled mine for a party tonight, and they’re in the oven right now. I can’t see how these 4 layers could possibly turn out badly!
I used 4 of the 5oz hershey’s bars in a 9×11 pan. 3 1/2 fit perfectly and then I broke the remaining half to line the side with.
I remedied the second layer of dough problem by putting the second half of the dough in a zip loc baggie. I used my palms to flatten it out, and then used scissors to cut down both long sides, so it opened up book-style. Then I opened it up carefully, and the dough stuck just fine one the bottom side of the bag. I then picked it up and layed it dough side down on the other three layers. From there, I peeled the baggie up, smushed a little bit to get the dough evenly spread, and voila! Perfect fourth layer.
Hope that tip helps someone!
You have GOT to try this recipe! Thank you so much for posting it Nicole!
niall Oct 28
just found this on stumbleupon and i love it! Great blog! Anything to do with baking is good to me!
Johanna Nov 16
How do i make this marshmallow fluff??? I live in Iceland and i don’t think we have that here …..
Dawnie Feb 7
Hi Nicole! The scent of this recipe is filling my kitchen for the 6th time! Thank you for posting it, tomorrow it’s being sent into my son’s teachers for their installment of Sugar High Friday (I love that phrase - Kudos to it’s creator) And kudo’s to you for a very fun site to visit!
Jillian Feb 19
I made these during a blizzard this past Sunday. The perfect treat for this snowed in Iowan. I absentmindedly left out the brown sugar and used special dark chocolate chips for half the chocolate. The brown sugar was not missed. The next time I make them I will add the brown sugar as per instruction to see what I may have missed. This si the first recipe I have used from your site, since discovering its existence a week ago. You have me hooked! I hope you’re blog will remain blogging for years to come. If not, you need to get a cookbook out!
Christine Mar 9
Oh my, we made these last night and they were fabulous and all gone!
Esther Mar 16
Can I use regular m&m candies to bake in cookies? I really need an answer in a hurry- baking for a school- Thank you so much in advance!
lyn Apr 20
YUM! enough said, Lyn
RPO Jun 25
These looks delicious and easy!
desiree Jun 28
these look wonderful. I’m going to take these on our camping trip. the photos are making me drool!
CC Jul 13
OH MY WORD! These are to die for good! Wow!
I needed these to help at a building site. Did they EVER go over well…maybe a little TOO well! The workers were all relaxed and resting their tummy’s (with closed eyes) when I left! LOL
Baked Perfection Jul 19
I made this recipe and it was absolutely amazing! I posted it on my blog. http://bakedperfection.blogspot.com
Cathy C Jul 21
These look so great and not near as messy as the campfire version - not to mention when it is triple digits outside the last thing everyone wants to do is sit around a “fire”
This is a must make
Cheers
Cathy
www.wheresmydamnanswer.com
Sarah Jul 31
These look SO amazing. Unfortunately, after making them, I realized that I just didn’t care for them. I’m not sure why as I remember loving s’mores. I guess my taste buds may have changed since then, but I was disappointed. It looked so delicious! Anyway, other people seemed to enjoy them but I didn’t get the rave reviews I was expecting.