Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Portable S'mores

Sometimes I over think things to the point of being way too critical, part of that makes me really annoying to be around, but once in a while it leads to something awesome.

I’ve always loved smores.  Let me rephrase, I’ve always loved the idea of s’mores- graham cracker crust, chocolate, melty gooey fire roasted marshmallow. What could go wrong? Well nothing ever really goes wrong, but nothing ever goes exactly right either. The graham cracker is too big and inflexible and inevitably breaks; leaving your s’more sandwich without a home. The chocolate never melts or does anything besides break in the exact opposite way that your graham cracker broke. The only redeeming part of the whole process is the marshmallow.  Which is why, inevitably, after the first nostalgic s’more, everyone just gives up and eats just the marshmallow. This is tragic people! Tragic I tell you! This is a good concept. All of these things taste good together, they just don’t play nice.

So, with all this crazy rolling around in my head for the last 25 years you can imagine my Eureka moment when I saw a recipe for s’more pops. If I had been sitting it a bathtub, I might have run around town naked.  The recipe I stumbled across called for skewering a marshmallow on a stick, dipping it in chocolate and then rolling it in graham cracker crumbs. But then it called for freezing the concoction and serving it as a popsicle.
 Ehh, this idea didn’t exactly rock my socks, but the concept was promising. The main problem with the recipe was that it was missing that fundamental part of what makes a s’more awesome. The whole gooey melty fire toasted thing. So, I did the following and the stars aligned and there was world peace (at least for the 5 minutes I spent scarfing these down).

You will need:
Bag of marshmallows (fresh made ones if you can find them)
Mix of chocolate chips that you like, I used a combo of 2/3 milk chocolate and 1/3 semi-sweet.
Graham crackers
Wax paper
Parchment Paper

Steps:
  1. Obliterate your graham crackers into little crumbs. You can use a food processor if you want to be all efficient, but I’ve found putting the crackers in a gallon sized plastic bag and then smashing the crap out of them immensely satisfying.
  2. Melt chocolate. You can use a double boiler, but you could also do it the easy way. I popped my chips into a microwave safe bowl and then zapped them in 30 sec intervals, making sure to stir thoroughly in between.
  3.  Line cookie sheet with parchment paper. Place marshmallows in evenly space rows. Put under broiler. Watch the marshmallows like your life depended on it. They turn from white to almost burnt in about ½ a second. Just when you think they won’t turn brown, boom they’re burnt. Don’t even blink.  No, I’m not kidding. My boiler is on the bottom of my stove, so I literally laid on the ground and watched them. I will not be responsible if the fire department is called.
  4. Take toasted marshmallows (I only toasted the one side, didn’t want them to get too gooey.) and dip in chocolate. I did a partial dip only covering them half way. I thought they looked pretty like that.
  5. Immediately dip in graham cracker crumbs, transfer to wax paper.
  6. I then put everything in the freezer for a few minutes (just to harden up). Once the chocolate hardened I then kept them in the fridge.
  7. Invite friends over so you don’t gain 5 pounds. 

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