It would be a redundancy for me to say summertime and s’mores go together like, well, ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong. That’s a reference from Grease, if you think my hands just fell across the keyboard for that one.
Earlier in July, my best friend Kendall was talking me through her contributions to her family’s annual Fourth of July festivities. One such dessert was a s’mores pie, which intrigued me. In all honesty, it’s Kendall that’s sent me down a bit of a s’mores rabbit hole.
You see, I’ve always felt s’mores to be low-hanging fruit in the endless ouroboros of desserts tasting like other desserts. Perhaps that’s snobbish of me, but I only recall feeling this way about the red velvet craze of the early 2010s. Well, and that Blue Bell can only seem to come up with a million variations of chocolate with ice cream. We get it! They go well together!
Plus, for me, s’mores are always best made with a fire and lots of friends. One of the many times we’ve grilled out this summer had me and John passing around a bottle of Off! Deep Woods and provisions for a rapid-fire s’mores course. Yet something about a sticky, sweet, burnt marshmallow will always make me smile. One bite and I’m a child again.
Over the many pages of this column, I’ve preached the virtues of the icebox cake, a cold salad, anything to imitate air conditioning in the height of summer. I don’t know about you, but triple-digit temperatures aren’t the most hospitable conditions for grilling out.
Thus, no s’mores. Yet, in a bid to satiate my ever-Southern sweet tooth, I haven’t given up on trying to keep the summer spirit alive.
This past Sunday, we went to see Rev. Dan Thornton for his birthday, but I knew I couldn’t just show up empty-handed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Dan, it’s that he’s quite a cookie monster. So I knew I had my options sewed up to cookies, but that opens a whole new realm of possibilities.
Cookies, like most any baked good, can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. Lord knows I’ve shared a number of not-too-easy cookie recipes. Well, it’s not that I don’t think they’re easy, they’re just a little time-consuming.
Whoever said that cooking doesn’t eat up time, though?
Anyway, I couldn’t do anything that needed to rest overnight and I didn’t want to make a dough where you end up with 100 cookies. Something fast, something easy, something no-bake ideally.
Then, I started thinking about bar cookies.
In the cake world, there’s sheet cakes—a no-fuss, easily shareable option compared to complex layer cakes. Bar cookies are, to me, like the sheet cakes of the cookie world. You bake them up in a single layer, slice them up before serving, and you have a plate of cookies before you know it.
With different doughs, different methods, there’s all kinds of considerations that go in to baking a pan of cookies—scooping or slicing, spacing, greasing or lining, rotating pans and cooling racks, etc. Every bar cookie I’ve made is a one-pan wonder that can either suit a small family or a large crowd, depending on the proportions.
This brings me to a teenage favorite of mine: Golden Grahams cereal.
Much like Jerry Seinfeld, I have an affinity for kid’s breakfast cereals and Pop-Tarts. Over the years, I’ve diverted my attention to more sensible options, but every time I’m in the cereal aisle I can’t help but hear the siren call of Corn Pops.
Anyway, Golden Grahams have hung on after all this time, by the grace of General Mills. Carolyn Nelson, whom I learned last week is no longer with us (tribute to come), has a recipe that ticked every box for me this past Sunday.
Off I went to Piggly Wiggly to get a box of Golden Grahams and, just for posterity’s sake, a family size box of Raisin Bran. Blessedly, we had everything else for this recipe at home.
When I read out Golden Grahams S’mores to John Allan he said, “Well that’s a good use for them.”
I just so happen to agree.
Dust off your marshmallows and grease up your hands, because it’s gonna be a sticky one.
Golden Graham S’mores
3/4 cup white corn syrup
3 Tablespoons butter
1 (11.5 ounce) package milk chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 (12 ounce) box Golden Grahams cereal
3 cups miniature marshmallows
Put the corn syrup, butter, chocolate chips, and vanilla in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Pour this over the cereal in a large bowl. Fold in marshmallows. Press into a greased 9×13 inch pan. Let stand for 1 hour. Cut into squares.
Y’all I don’t know if it gets simpler than that!
As Ann was telling me about greasing a pan with butter, it ends up being the first thing you taste. Thus, I highly recommend greasing your pan with butter.
At home, we had semisweet chocolate chips, which is not gonna hurt anything, it’ll just have a milder sweetness to the chocolate. Personally, I like this, even if I am loyal to a Hershey bar’s stranglehold on the annual s’mores industry. It’s a well-earned stranglehold, I’ll give it that.
From time to time, though, I’ve been known to make my s’mores with dark chocolate, which can balance out the sweetness of everything else.
A home cook on YouTube I’ve been watching a while, Frannie Jo Savvy Sweet, has said time and again that she grew up only using the dark corn syrup, never the light. My family kept both around, even though we ended up using the light more in candies and whatnot.
Some folks I know like to mix melted butter and corn syrup together for their biscuits. I’d sooner just use Golden Eagle or Alaga, if you ask me—it’s already in there!
Either corn syrup would work in this application, so don’t get too caught up in that.
What I will say is this recipe is very sticky and quite an arm workout. When you press this into the pan, it may be useful to keep your hands greased from buttering the pan up, just so you’ll have less sticking to you.
We had a giant bag of square marshmallows, meant for s’mores leftover in our baking supplies. They’re vanilla flavored, which is an interesting variation I must say. Nevertheless, they weren’t miniature.
No worries! Just grease up a clean pair of kitchen shears and you can snip away at the larger marshmallows to make them miniature.
The only reason why you’d want miniature marshmallows for this recipe is the ease in distribution when mixing. It’s like cutting butter into smaller chunks so it melts evenly. However, chopping up your larger marshmallows in this way has the same effect.
When you go to slice these, you could also grease your knife, just make sure it’s a serrated knife to get through all those layers.
I can remember my mother making rice krispie treats exactly once. Although she was quite adept at making chocolate covered pretzels—one of my favorite delicacies.
My family’s philosophy at a certain point became: if you can buy it, why would you make it?
However, these are stupid simple like most of these quick candies and confections. Whip this up the morning of the potluck and by lunch you’ll have something that agrees with everyone.
When I brought these to Dan’s birthday party people were asking me what was in the container before I even set it on the table.
To be fair, I did bring it in a plastic tub that originally housed sheep yogurt. Which, if you’ve never had sheep yogurt, might be my new favorite kind of yogurt.
See how many times I can say “yogurt” in the closing of a recipe column about s’mores bars.
Try these for yourself, or just get yourself a box of Golden Grahams. I saved my box just for the back, which suggests all the nifty ways you can incorporate Golden Grahams throughout your gastronomical journey.
On popcorn, in trail mix, and, if you can imagine, atop some strawberry yogurt.
Or have them in a s’mores bar.
After all, that’s why I brought you here, isn’t it?
