S’mores

  We recently went camping. Did you know, cooking over a campfire is really hard?

I mean, I love love love my dutch oven. But you know what I like even better?

An oven where I can turn a dial and know exactly what temperature it’s at.

I burned the hobo dinners a little. Then I undercooked the breakfast in a paper bag (which, I’m still skeptical about. Doesn’t the bag just catch on fire?) And when we wrapped sticks with cinnamon twist pillsbury dough (from the can), one side was burnt and the inside was raw. Not to mention the dough constantly untwisting and drooping into the fire. Putting them in foil to cook amongst the coals… not much better results. So I’m feeling extremely grateful that we have ovens and that firewood (or even coal) is not a necessity of every meal. I’ve been complaining about my electric stove because I want a gas one so badly, but really. I have a stove. With dials.

Camp food is somewhat glorious because you’re always hungry by the time you want to eat something. And smoke makes a gorgeous seasoning. So you put up with a lot.

The really perfect camp food, though, is s’mores. I’m slightly obsessed with s’mores, and I eat them at least once a week, cooked in the toaster oven. The toaster oven is perfect because the marshmallows are browned, liquid all the way through to the center, and the chocolate actually melts. So even this camp food is better at home. Here’s Amaya showing us her dirty hands after our s’more fest. “Charlie and the Chocolate Hands,” she says. I think it was her first joke.

I enjoy the classic s’more recipe, but I also like to mix things up a bit. Here are some more ideas.

For the diet conscious:

Anna’s Chocolate Mint Thins and 1 marshmallow. I was surprised how much I liked these.

For convenience:

Keebler’s half-dipped graham cracker/cookies with 4 mini marshmallows each (the size of these graham crackers are small, so mini marshmallows work better. It’s nice to not have to deal with little pieces of chocolate when you’re sitting at a campfire in the dark.

For the sweet tooth:

graham crackers, Reese’s peanut butter cup, and marshmallow. These are my favorite.

If you want to make these at home, I just set up my graham crackers, mallows, and chocolate on a toaster sheet pan, and hit 450 on the temp. Toast until the mallows are browned (about 5 minutes).