S'mores Cookies...

It's getting to be that time of the year when marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars go on sale as everyone becomes a kid again and sets out to make those gooey layered treats over a campfire, or even over your stove if so inclined! Seeing as that would be fairly hard to replicate at an office (although I guess a microwave could work in a pinch!), we decided to go with that theme in mind for the Weekly Wednesday Treat Day, making these S'mores Cookies.

While there are no actual graham crackers used in the dough, the recipe does do a little magic to try and impart a similar profile, using ground rolled oats (done in the food processor), along with whole-wheat and all-purpose flours. If I had any, I would have probably swapped out the whole-wheat flour for graham flour, but alas our freezer was bare - we used the last of it making yet another batch of those Homemade Graham Crackers a few weeks ago.

Scented with cinnamon and laced with brown sugar and plenty of butter, the cookie dough is scooped out onto lined baking sheets, then each ball is adorned with a solid, chunky block of bittersweet chocolate. Use a good-quality bar of chocolate for this - bittersweet if you can, which will help cut through some of the sweetness. However, if bittersweet is too strong for you, knock it down a notch by using semi-sweet. I wouldn't go with milk chocolate though - that may make the cookies a bit on the cloying side and not as enjoyable. You still want to be able to taste the wheat-y goodness of the cookie without being overwhelmed by sugar.

So how does the classic marshmallow ingredient that goes into S'mores come in? Once the cookies have baked, each is given a hat by laying a halved large mallow right over the dark pool of chocolate in the center. To give the pillowy topping a toasty element, the cookies are lined up like little soldiers and blasted under the heat of the broiler for just a few seconds. I do have one important note - be sure you don't take your peepers off these for a second when they go back in as the marshmallow can go from golden to blackened in the blink of an eye! If you happen to have one of those hand-held kitchen torches, use that instead and go to town!

I do realize that these fun treats probably won't have the same oomph as they did when they came fresh out of the oven, but by the time we got to trying them they were completely at room temperature and we still found them crazy good. I may, however, have Jeff send a suggestion out with his e-mail that if they want the true experience, to nuke them for just a few seconds to remelt their chocolate centers and give the marshmallow a little puff.

Recipes
S'mores Cookies