some more s’mores
Just in case… s’mores are an “around the campfire” kind of treat here in the U.S. … I’m not sure if they are an international thing or not. I think I had my first experience with s’mores in either Brownies or Girl Scouts.
You roast a marshmallow, preferable on a stick found in the woods, over a campfire. Meanwhile, you take a Hershey’s chocolate bar snapped in half and put that on half of a graham cracker. When your marshmallow is done to your own personal satisfaction (some like them “raw”, some just tan and some of us like a bit of burned), you plop the hot, gooey mess on top of the chocolate and smush the other half of the graham cracker over the top.
I’ve never seen one look that pristine, but the image shows the construction.
At any rate, the flavor combo of graham cracker, milk chocolate and marshmallow is pretty good to most folks.
Last week, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for s’mores cupcakes. They were for her son’s school to celebrate his and other September birthday kids, birthdays. They looked like so much fun and I’d been wanting to take a special treat to my neighbor’s children: Carter (5) and Hudson (7). So, I made the recipe.
Deb’s “secret” is crushed graham crackers in the cupcake batter. It works!
Some of the insides are scooped out and filled with a milk chocolate ganache…
Now, Deb left the tops off …wonder what she did with them ? I put the tops back on save for a bit of inside stuff that I lopped off … and ate. Well, wouldn’t you ?
If you clicked over and looked at Deb’s cupcakes and recipe, you would see that she topped the cupcakes with meringue which she then browned with a kitchen torch. I don’t have a kitchen torch, but I figured I could brown the meringue under the broiler. I’m sure that would work, but I had a failure with the meringue. I have some ideas why, but suffice to say that the egg – sugar – cream of tartar mix did not peak…
Fortunately, another commenter before me noted that instead of meringue, she topped the cupcakes with marshmallows and ran those under the broiler. So that’s what I did and it was fine. The kids were thrilled with cupcakes that had marshmallows on them. Win!
Onward.
In response to Deb’s s’mores cupcake post, David Lebovitz posted a recipe for s’mores ice cream. Huh.
Well, I had to try.
The ice cream was as much fun to make as the cupcakes. This was my first summer with an ice cream machine and it was such a hot summer (hot for Montana…) and I made mostly fruit ice creams. The idea of chocolate and marshmallows or other gooey stuff just did not appeal. But now, I was ready to try something different. This recipe is a vanilla custard base with a ripple of chocolate sauce, roasted marshmallows and crushed graham crackers.
It is good. It is very rich and a little goes a long way.
Now… the ice cream took 5 egg yolks, which means I have 5 egg whites left. I’ve been wanting to make marcaron and I’ve read that older egg whites work best.
Here is the recipe that is on tap for macaron: s’mores macaron. Some more s’mores.
2 Responses to “some more s’mores”
Well, that was interesting as I’ve been reading about s’mores for years in books but never seen one. None of those biscuits around here or Herschey chocolate, and marshmallows are rare so I don’t think I’ll be seeing one any time soon. But the cakes and the ice cream look delicious!
Margaret, I never know when I write something like “this is a U.S. thing”, if it really is! David Lebovitz, in his ice cream post, noted that he can’t get graham crackers in France and he actually used gingersnap cookies in the ice cream. Graham crackers are a ginger-cinnamon sweet cracker (biscuit). Crushed graham crackers are used for a bottom pie crust in the U.S. – usually for custard or pudding kind of pies.
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