Archive for: s’mores
Ever since I had my first one, sitting in front of a roaring campfire with a semi-clean stick skewered with lots of toasting marshmallows, I have been a big fan of s’mores. If I could go back in time, only thing I’d do differently now is to use a really clean skewer for my marshmallows, but when you’re camping and very young, you don’t tend to think about those things. I still like classic s’mores made with squares of milk chocolate, store bought graham crackers and jet puffed marshmallows. Now that my culinary skills are a little improved, however, I do like to experiment a little bit and see how I can get even more flavor out of my s’mores. Homemade graham crackers and homemade marshmallows are great examples of small changes. A big change is to turn a simple s’more into a S’mores Cake.
You don’t need a campfire for this cake, but you do need an oven. It’s a graham cracker cake, layered with marshmallow creme and milk chocolate frosting. The cake is made with graham cracker crumbs where you might otherwise use all purpose flour, and is leavened with both baking powder and egg whites that have been beaten to soft peaks. The finished cake is light in texture, but has a ton of graham cracker flavor. It is very moist, so it will crack if it isn’t handled with care when you’re stacking up the layers.
The milk chocolate frosting – chosen because the typical s’more uses milk chocolate – is almost like a milk chocolate ganache. It is made with chocolate, half and half and butter. The thing that differentiates it is that I included a little bit of corn syrup, which gives it a shiny look and makes it very easy to work with. The marshmallow creme is just store-bought marshmallow creme. It spreads onto the cake easily and stays nice and soft, making the cake easy to cut and serve.
One final note: a fire pit makes a great backdrop for a photo of a S’mores cake, but the cake really isn’t designed to hold up to heat of any kind. Both the frosting and the marshmallow creme are a little heat-sensitive. Unless it’s a cold day, you can – and should – store this cake in the fridge to keep everything intact. The cake will stay moist and tender even after a couple of days in the fridge. But if you don’t mind a melty, slightly messy cake that is like a real s’more, than by all means, go for the fire.
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Who doesn’t enjoy a freshly made s’more, with toasty, caramelized marshmallow melting into milk chocolate and delivered in between two crisp graham crackers? I know that I do, and I like the combination enough to experiment a bit with different variations on the theme, too. S’mores: Gourmet Treats For Every Occasion is a cookbook dedicated to the s’more and to creating tasty variations on it.
The book is based on the premise that the heart of the s’more is the toasted marshmallow in the center, rather than the chocolate or the graham cracker components, so all the recipes use toasted marshmallow. Building out from that marshmallow, the recipes vary the flavor and amount of chocolate used, as well as the “container” (the two pieces of cookie or fruit on either side of the filling that hold the s’more together). Some of the variations are simple, substituting chocolate chip or sugar cookies for the grahams, while others add caramel sauce or rely on flavored chocolate candies to make things more interesting. Just about all of the recipes make you think “why didn’t I think of that!”
The best thing about the book is that it is packed with beautiful photos of the s’more recipes it includes. I have a hard time getting my marshmallows not to burn when I toast them over an open flame, so it’s doubly impressive that they were able to make the marshmallows look so perfectly cooked. Even if you don’t end up trying the recipes straight from the book, the photos serve as an excellent source of inspiration and, after reading through, you’re sure to want to experiment a bit the next time you have some marshmallows and a heat source – fire, stove, bbq, etc. – available.
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.
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August 10th (today!) is National S’mores Day. I’m still not entirely sure who comes up with these days, but I will say that this is one I am more than happy to celebrate. With crispy graham crackers, gooey marshmallows and melty chocolate, what is there not to love about a s’more?
S’mores originated around the turn of the 20th century, right arond the time that commercial marshmallows were becoming widespread. People were looking for things to do with them (aside from eating them straight out the package) and, at some point, someone came up with the s’more.
The treat is not attributed to any one person. It is generally assumed that the s’more was invented by campers or vacationers, then passed from person to person by word of mouth (and perhaps sharing the actual treats) at campsites. The traditional way of making a s’more is to toast a marshmallow over a camp fire, then sandwich it between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate. The first official recipe for s’mores was published in the 1927 Girl Scout Handbook, which launched the treat into pop culture history.
If you don’t have a campfire handy, you can make s’mores by (a) microwaving the marshmallow-chocolate-graham combination or (b) broiling a graham-chocolate-marshmallow stack and topping it with another graham before eating. I’ve also known people with gas stoves to toast their marshmallows over those flames.
Want some more?
Like so many others, I am more than happy to eat Peeps – those deliciously sugar-coated, brightly colored holiday marshmallows – raw, especially around Easter when Just Born puts out their traditional yellow chicks and purple bunnies. These days, they put out quite a few more colors, more shapes and more flavors (like the Cocoa Bunnies), as well as offering a sugar-free Peep, but in my book, nothing beats the classics. “Raw” is the usual way to eat Peeps, though the debate over whether fresh Peeps or stale ones are superior can get to be very heated. Since they’re just marshmallows, however, they’re ripe for inclusion in the classic campfire marshmallow treat: s’mores.
My Peeps s’mores were made in the microwave, rather than a campfire, but the sugary, chocolaty goodness was still hard to resist. The only thing to watch out for if you make these yourself is that Peeps tend to blow up in the microwave, so you don’t want to overcook them and have the marshmallow overwhelm the graham cracker. Or get stuck all over the inside of the microwave.
