S'mores

I loved to read all the American teen books when I was a kid and s'mores came up more than once. I've always been curious as to what they tasted like, because everyone in the books thought they were magic.

The latest Donna Hay magazine had the most gorgeous picture of s'mores on the front and a recipe which included making your own biscuit from scratch (because what is a graham cracker?). I had some Ghirardelli dark chocolate squares tempting me so I thought I would give it a try.

Before I even got to the s'more part, I fell in love with the biscuit batter. This was the most divine biscuit batter I had ever tasted, dangerously so. I could have gotten another 2 biscuits from what I left in the bowl "for cleaning".

I'm not a big fan of lots of chocolate chips in biscuits, I like them sparse and far between because chocolate chips as they are are too big a chunk of chocolate. Ideally, I should have put them in the food processor for a bit and chopped them down in size, but I was lazy, so I just halved the amount of chocolate chips required. I only used milk chocolate because that was all I had.

I also left the oats out of my second try. On my first try I did add them, but I think my oats had gone stale because they were horrible. This (and only having half of the chocolate chips) meant that my biscuit dough was more of a biscuit batter.

I overcooked the second batch. I set the timer for 12 minutes and then forgot about it, but I definately should have checked at 10. They were still good though. I am going to pretend that I meant to do it this way and I'm calling them 'snaps' instead of biscuits. They are crispily chewy on the outside and nicely chewy on the inside. DD really liked them.

The s'more part was a little underwhelming, truth be told. On my first try (see the first picture), I had way too much chocolate. This is why the picture is still of it on the baking paper - the chocolate was going everywhere! I had only used one marshmallow and the dark chocolate overpowered everything. The next time I used two marshallows and half a square of chocolate which worked better, but I didn't really like it. It tasted like a chocolate coated marshmallow lolly and didn't have the toasty melted taste I was hoping for.

The biscuits are fantastic though.

Chocolate and Oat S'mores
from Donna Hay Magazine Winter 2008, p92

125g butter, softened
1 1/2 cups (220g) brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (225g) plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp baking powder, sifted
100g dark chocolate chips
100g milk chocolate chips
1/3 cup (30g) rolled oats
20 pieces of dark chocolate
20 marsmallows

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8 to 10 minutes or until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat until well combined. Add the flour and baking powder and beat until just combined. Fold through the dark and milk chocolate chips and rolled oats. Roll tablespoons of the mixture and place on baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper, leaving space between them to spread. Flatten slightly and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden. Cool on trays.

To assemble, place the biscuits bottom side up on a tray. Top half with a piece of chocolate and the other half with a marshmallow. Bake until the chocolate and marshmallows are starting to melt. Sandwich the halves together and serve.