Over the past couple months, I’ve moved to Richmond! And I’m mostly unpacked, armed with ovens and a stand mixer of my very own now.

The oven is preheated and it’s time to re-open for business.

There’s no denying that s’mores are the peak specimen of campfire treats. It’s the perfect thing to put together while sitting and chatting - you can pay about 10% of your attention to the chocolate you’re warming and the marshmallow you’re roasting, accidentally set the marshmallow on fire, and then sandwich it with marginally melted chocolate to make a burnt, gooey, sugary rectangle which you can get all over yourself. But it’s ok, since no one else is really going to do any better.

S’mores-like forms of other sweet items have always seemed like winners, in my book - I’ve gone on record stating that S’mores Pop Tarts are by far superior to all others. Though Banana Creme Pop Tarts may give them a run for its money if I ever buy a box of Pop Tarts again.

But anyway, I hadn’t considered making s’mores in a normal cookie form until trying some Girl Scout S’mores last year. I hadn’t serious thought about it because s’mores cookies seemed less like an adaptation of the s’more concept and more of an uninspired representation of what a s’more is. But these cookies turned me around. They’re very much like a s’more in form, but different in that the cookies are much crunchier than crackers, and the inner filling has more of an Oreo-like consistency. The distinct flavors (chocolate, marshmallow, graham) are all solid though, and it makes a very satisfying cookie sandwich that’s has a distinct identity from the venerable campfire snack.

There are couple things I found out while writing this, in relation to Scouts and s’mores. One, the Girl Scouts claim to have published the first recipe for a s’more. Second, and more alarming - Girl Scouts actually distributes TWO entirely different s’mores cookies TODAY! The two varieties are made by different baking megacorps. I tried the sandwich cookies, but I imagine the other version is probably worth trying sometime, especially since they are (or at least recently were) made in Richmond.

Regardless, this serendipitous encounter with the organization that purports to have discovered s’mores serves proof that the whole concept deserves s’more exploration.

So let’s start playing around.

Smore’s Sandwiches v 0.1

My first attempt at a s’mores cookie is a smores sandwich, in a similar vein those girl scout cookies. That said, outside of that, they ended up a fair bit different.

the goodsthe goods

These cookies have cookie, marshmallow, and chocolate layer components, which are:

Graham Shortbread

So for this cookie sandwich, instead of a graham, I thought it’d be good to end up with a graham-like shortbread cookie. The key flavors in a graham cracker are whole wheat (or a specific kind of more coarsely ground whole wheat, aptly called graham flour), and honey. These seem pretty simple to incorporate into a basic shortbread cookie.

While here, I wanted to test some alternatives to the whole wheat flour. The first is buckwheat, which is more of a proper guess at a gluten-free graham substitute might use, and the second was pecan flour, which was more of just a curiosity. The alternatives were substituted 1:1 by mass for all of the flour in the recipe.

With this, the ingredients I used were:

As per any shortbread, it’s pretty easy to assemble and bake.

  1. Combine the coconut oil, sugar, and honey in a bowl. Mix until well combined and all visible oil chunks have been broken up.
  2. Add flour and salt and mix to combine.
  3. Shape into cookies on a baking sheet.
  4. Bake at 325 degrees F for 15 minutes.

For me, this yielded about 26-30 cookies for a batch, or half that many sandwiches.

Here’s how the tester cookies turned out:

L: pecan flour, C: buckwheat, R: whole wheatL: pecan flour, C: buckwheat, R: whole wheat

As expected, the actual wheat flour shortbreads keep their definition/edges the best, and it sort of looks the most like a graham cracker.

The buckwheat cookies are similar, but noticeably sandier in texture. And the pecan cookies are not super graham like at all, and a fair bit softer.

Marshmallow Fluff

I haven’t made this before, so I followed a standard-ish recipe that purports to make a stable fluff.

It turned out very sticky and goopy, very much like you’d expect marshmallow fluff to be and pretty much just like the pictures in the recipe. I didn’t get my own pictures to compare, unfortunately.

This made enough fluff for the full set of 3 batches of cookies.

Chocolate Ganache

To make a standard ganache, you just need to melt cream and chocolate together at a roughly 1:1 mass ratio without letting the chocolate get too hot.

This one probably had more of a 1.5 or 2 to 1 ratio (toward chocolate), as my goal was to have a noticeable chocolate layer But I didn’t measure this closely for this go-round.

Assembly

To assemble, paint half of the cookies on their bottoms with still-warm chocolate ganache. Then, dollop fluff onto the other cookie bottoms. (This is hard to do since the fluff is so sticky, but it worked out eventually.) Then just stick the cookies together, press together until the fillings come up to the edges, and they done! To make sure the chocolate firms up in the summer time, stick them in the fridge for an hour or two.

Thoughts and Future Iterations

The results were good and tasty, but there’s even more to experiment with to get something truly stellar.

I liked the versions with all the cookies. I liked the softness of the pecan cookie more than I expected, though I still think I liked the wheat shortbread the best.

The Graham

Overall - I think these cookies ended up pretty good, but the wheat/buckwheat cookies were not quite as crunchy as I might have liked. More crunch would have contrasted with the marshmallow a bit better.

Things to try here include:

The Marshmallow

This might have been a bit too sweet - in a way, I found it sort of dominated the chocolate. I’d never made marshmallow fluff in this way, so it was fun to do though. And it returns some of the sticky messiness back to the s’more, which is nice.

Some things to try with the marshmallow component might be:

The Chocolate

In my view, this was fine, but pretty standard. There’s probably a way to make the chocolate have more impact - maybe just using more is called for, since typical s’mores themselves don’t hold back when it comes to chocolate.

Regarding the chocolate, it may be possible to:

There’s a lot of possibilities to try. I guess I’ve come to realize that there’s a rich space in s’morescookieland to play around in, so I’ll have to come back.

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