S’MORES BARS

S’mores are a very popular American treat, traditionally made around a campfire and consisting of a roasted marshmallow and layer of chocolate sandwiched between two Graham Crackers. I grew up hearing about them in American movies and TV shows and was always intrigued, but they never made it over to the UK. When I mention s’mores to anyone in the UK, they look at me blankly.

Anyway, I work in an office of girls who love their food and we got to talking about these things called s’mores that we’d heard so much about but never tasted. So we started googling images of them and we got more and more excited about them. Being one of the greediest in the office, I was willing to try making them so we could all taste them, however, there was one big stumbling block – Graham Crackers. Its very hard to find Graham Crackers here in the UK, although you can of course buy them online, for a hefty price tag. I looked online for a reasonable alternative and found quite a lot of people suggesting Digestive biscuits, but equally as many telling me I needed the real thing. Hmmm…

I decided to just go ahead with the Digestives and if they didn’t work, what harm would it do? I would still have marshmallow and chocolate in between biscuits. It may not taste like a genuine s’more, but it will still be damn good.

I wanted to put a bit of a twist on it so instead of making it the traditional way, I decided to make s’mores bars, making a cake-like biscuit base and top and using a using marshmallow cream instead of toasted marshmallows.   It turned out pretty well although I would adapt it a bit next time I make it.  But here is the way I did it last week…

Ingredients
113g/1 stick of butter, room temperature
55g/1/4 cup brown sugar
64g/1/2 cup caster sugar
4 bars Green & Black milk chocolate (not their Creamy Milk)
1 large egg
1 x 213g tub marshmallow creme/Fluff
1 tsp vanilla extract
170g / 1 1/3 cups plain flour
100g/1/2 cup digestive biscuits, blitzed to fine crumbs
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 150C Fan/180C/350F degrees and grease and line an 8-inch square baking tin.

First cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg and vanilla and set aside.

Meanwhile, whisk together flour, biscuit crumbs, baking powder and salt.

Slowly add flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture until combined.

Divide the dough in half and press half it into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan.

Next place the chocolate over the dough and then spread the marshmallow creme or fluff over the top.

Then place the rest of the dough in a single layer on top of the fluff.  This is HARD! I ended up breaking the pieces of dough into little bits over the Fluff and then dipped my fingertips into water and tried to spread each piece of dough until it joined up with the next piece.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned.

Be sure to cool completely before cutting into squares.

This is really good, well worth doing. Very sweet but very tasty. After it cools, the marshmallow goes a bit hard so you need to warm it up in the microwave for about 20 seconds. When it comes out, its gooey and warm and smells incredible.

The girls in the office loved them, even Harri, who normally hates anything sweet. My American friend Lisa also gave them her seal of approval. I would definitely make these again but I think I would use a chocolate spread next time as the chocolate bars didn’t melt the way I wanted them to.  I would also like to try it with toasted marshmallows next time, instead of the Fluff.  I’ll keep you posted!