S'mores

A few weeks ago, some neighbors invited me and other friends to their home for a barbecue. We had grilled chicken, potatoes, etc. The food was good and the evening was very relaxing, but one of the things I wanted to share from this event was that we had s'mores. Of course, I've had s'mores before, but there were a few things about THESE s'mores that are worth mentioning. First of all, my friends cooked the s'mores in a way I'd never seen before. They created foil packets with the s'more ingredients assembled inside and then put the packets in the coals to cook. The second thing worth noting is that in addition to graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallow, my friends included other ingredients such as sliced strawberries or bananas, pieces of Skor bars, or peanut butter in some of the packets. And using a Sharpie, they wrote on the foil what kind of s'more was inside each packet. That way, people could pick what kind of s'more they wanted after they came out of the fire.

Anyway, the s'mores were wonderful! Although I actually didn't get to try any of the peanut butter s'mores, I thought that the addition of strawberries and bananas was particularly tasty.

This activity gave me a few ideas:
1) You could have a kind of s'more bar at a picnic, where people could make their own s'mores, choose their own ingredients, etc. Dessert would be fun and easy.
2) The other idea I had was to try cooking s'mores indoors, using the foil packet method. So I tried this in my oven a few days ago, and it seemed to work quite well. In each packet, I put a bottom graham cracker, two pieces of Hershey chocolate, two marshmallows, and a top graham cracker. And in one, I put a few slices of banana. Then I closed the foil packets and put them in a 350 degree oven for about three to five minutes. Voila!

S'mores may be better cooked in the great outdoors, but I love this new (for me) method of creating a traditional taste treat.