S'more Cups!

So I guess that all I think about is food, or at least, that's all I could think of when I thought to myself, 'self, we should post something on the blog.  What should we talk about?'  Therefore, this will be another one of those food posts.  I hope it makes you hungry.

Remember when I told you about our camping trip?  And how it was more or less a failure except that we got some good pictures out of it as well as the right to brag that we went camping in October with a baby?  Well, there was one more success that I forgot to mention.  These:

The pine cone makes it look rustic and outdoors-y, right?  Not at all like it was photographed in my kitchen or something...

A couple of weeks before our camp out, we ran out of graham crackers, which have gradually become an ever more popular snack at our house.  Always the experimenter, my husband said something like, "I wonder if we could make our own graham crackers?  I'll bet we could..."

I ran with the idea, did a little research, found a recipe and tried it.  After my first batch of oddly shaped, Picasso-looking graham crackers, I got a little crazy and began to experiment.  The result (well, one of them) was a treat that just might become a must-have for camping at my house.

For the graham cracker dough:

I should tell you that I rarely ever follow a recipe just as it is written.  Almost everything gets tweaked, either because I'm missing ingredients or I'm just too lazy to do it the way it's written.  I followed this one almost exactly, though.  The only real difference was that, since I didn't have honey, I used molasses.

Combine:
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

Add and work into a cornmeal-like consistency:
7/8 stick of margarine or butter, cut into 1 inch cubes and chilled

Whisk together:
1/3 cup molasses
5 tbsp milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract

Add molasses mixture to other ingredients and mix just until combined.  Pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick rectangle on a piece of plastic wrap, sprayed with cooking spray.  Wrap the rest of the plastic around the dough and chill for 2-12 hours in the fridge.

If you're not a molasses fan, I can reassure you that the strong molasses taste in the dough fades significantly after baking.

Remove the chilled dough and, on a well-floured surface, roll it out so that it is about 1/8 inch thick (is it just me, or is it IMPOSSIBLE to get your flour to stay where you want it - under the dough?  On my second attempt, I tried spraying a clean counter top with cooking spray, then flouring it thoroughly.  It worked pretty well, but if anyone knows a trick for this sort of thing, I'd love to hear it).

This is the fun part - you can either cut little 2 inch squares and poke holes in them with a fork to make regular graham crackers, or, if you want to try making s'more cups with them, cut 3-4 inch circles and place them in a sprayed muffin tin.  I found that by making a cut almost to the center of each circle, it was easier to fit them in, cut out the excess dough, and mold them to the cup.

The original recipe says to chill your dough on/in the pan for another 25-35 minutes.  I've tried it with and without the second chilling and gotten similar results, but I definitely don't have very cultured taste buds.  Maybe a more proficient cook could tell the difference.  If you do have time to chill it again, this would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  The original recipe also says to bake these for 15-25 minutes.  I have found that I like to stick on the 15 end of things.  My resulting crackers and cups tend to be firm enough not to bend or fall apart without getting so hard that I can't bite into them without milk.

Remove from the oven and place a square of chocolate, a small handful of chocolate chips, or whatever sweet, gooey thing you would like melted beneath your marshmallow in the bottom of each cup.  It just so happens that my cute mother-in-law had sent us a Happy Halloween package, complete with Halloween candy, which arrived the day I did this, so I decided to try putting a Mini Milky Way bar in a couple of them.

Return to the oven for 1 minute, remove, and stir the chocolate/gooey stuff with a toothpick. 

Mmm... chocolate...

Let them cool for 5-10 minutes, then use the tip of a knife to lift them out of the muffin tin.  They should pop right out.  I put mine in the fridge for a few minutes to let the chocolate set up and then keep them in the cupboard for a week or two.

Roast marshmallows over a campfire or over your stove, place one in each cup and enjoy!

The downside of doing s'mores this way is that you kind of have to think ahead and take time to do all of the mixing, chilling, rolling, shaping, chilling, melting and chilling.  And that they obviously aren't as compact as regular flat grahams.

The upside is that, once you do have them, s'mores are so much less of a hassle and so much easier to enjoy.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm used to getting marshmallow all over my fingers, lips, nose, chin, hair and pants whenever I attempt to eat s'mores.  In fact, I've noticed that most people seem to like making the s'mores more than eating them and for me, this is one of the main reasons.  These make eating s'mores about 1/10th as messy (sticky-wise and crumb-wise).  I would definitely recommend it for kids.  

The second reason I love doing s'more this way is that, usually someone, either my mom or me, ends up sitting next to the campfire, trying to assemble and balance stacks of graham crackers and chocolate while everyone else roasts marshmallows.  How much fun is that?

And last but not least, they're pretty cute. :)