Including S’mores cookie bars as a flavour of the week was inspired by my friend Rae.. At an afternoon around the table, our teenagers went off with a bag of marshmallows tot eh fire and came back with these indulgent treats. I love the blend of crisp biscuit, gooey melted marshmallow and pools of melted chocolate int eh centre - Bliss. I decided to find out where they came from and why the weird name. This is what I found out.
The name is a contract of the term “some More” because once you’ve tried these you just want some more. The first recipe for the campfire treat is 90-years-old and recorded in a cookbook - “ Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts”.. I found it amusing the idea behind the book was to encourage healthy eating, but the recipe that is most used is that for S’mores or as they were originally called “ Graham Cracker Sandwich” or simply “Some More”.
It was the French who first marketed marshmallow as a treat and by the end of the 19th century, the original plant extracts were replaced with gelatine to give us the marshmallows we know today. The Graham cracker is my best bit. these basic, bland dry crackers were the idea of a Minister Graham who wanted to curve man’s obsession with carnal lust by creating this biscuit. It’s so ironic to think that this biscuit is the base of cheesecakes, desserts and part of the glorious S’mores today. The closet we have in my country is the Digestive biscuit tot original Graham cracker.
The original Girls Scout recipe ran something like this: To feed 16 hungry scouts take 16 graham crackers, eight bars of plain chocolate and 16 marshmallows. Next, toast the marshmallows to a "crispy, gooey state." Then, put the marshmallow on top of a chocolate bar and in between two graham crackers and, viola, you got a "Some More."
As a tribute to this great campfire tradition and in honour of my darling friend Rae I now present the S’Mores Cookie Bar! A delicious blend of marshmallow, biscuits and chocolate in a cookie bar base - blissful, delightful and reminiscent of summer evenings around the fire.
