OMG moving is quite the experience. It took a little under a week to get our happy new home in order when you count activating the internet and all that jazz (thank you Bell Canada for drawing out my moving process). There is still one box on the floor of my room — filled with unloved winter gear that currently has no place (I think it will probably stay in the box but be moved to the closet). I am now, officially, moved in with my boyfriend of a year and a half — not that anything has really changed considering we basically lived together anyway. Finding a place for all of his stuff and all of mine proved difficult since we both have WAY more books than either of us guess-timated, though we still haven’t really found a place for my deconstructed Ikea bed-frame. C’est la vie I guess.
Last night we had our first friend over for a night of fun. The wonderful Adam Schoales came over for home made pizza, good log, zombie killing (more on the xbox later… and the bee) and The Wicker Man (Seriously, if you ever need to laugh really hard at something really bad, watch The Wicker Man. The part where Nick Cage punches fake Kathy Bates in the face is priceless). In the style of Kara Wheeler, I made dessert — I made s’mores cookie bars in fact. They were pretty delicious — on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being a moderately made sugar cookie and 10 being this brownie mosaic cheesecake that Kara made for someones birthday over the summer, these s’mores bars were probably about a 6: universally liked and good, but probably not a regular bake or something I’ll crave. They are a “day dessert” and would be really great to bring on a picnic or a day trip. Be warned: Marshmallow puff or fluff or whatever will get EVERYWHERE and despite appearances, is fairly delicious. Also, the whole suggestion of putting the top layer of dough in a bag and all that is rather hard to do but does work — patience and faith is necessary.
S’mores Cookie Bars
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (approximately 7 full graham crackers)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 super-sized (5 oz.) dark chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s)
1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough. Two 5 oz. Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread marshmallow fluff evenly over the chocolate layer.
Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff. This is most easily done by putting the second half of the dough in a gallon size freezer bag. Use your palms to flatten it out, and then use scissors to cut down both long sides of the bag, so it will open up book-style. Open it up carefully, and the dough will stick on one side of the bag. Then place the bag, dough side down, on the other three layers. From there peel the bag up ad spread the dough where it is uneven.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars
Makes 16 cookie bars.
