“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…” Ahhh Independence Day, the Fourth of July, whichever you’d like to call it, it’s one of my favorite holidays. Maybe because it’s like THE biggest cookout day of the year. You’ll be shocked to know that I am NOT cooking out. Oh how I want to bite into a nice piece of grilled chicken breast and some sweet corn on the cob. It just aint happening. I’m kinda pooped, no get up and go, just want to lay here across the bed and watch tv in the middle of the week. I worked yesterday, even put in two hours of unexpected overtime and like most of you, I’ll be back at work tomorrow. I’m just really enjoying being still for a moment and it feels great!
Now I will confess that I did get up around 7:30 to set my butter out and measure out my dry ingredients, I wanted to bake. I was thinking earlier this week on what to bake for the 4th. What is American? Apple pie (not a fan), cherry pie (not a fan), chocolate chip cookies (boring), blueberry something (???)…sigh…this is hard. Then it finally hit me, S’Mores! Oh I have another confession, I’ve never in my 46 years of living, ever had a S’More. I’ve had and made S’Mores bars but that’s not a REAL S’More. I’ve yet to experience the graham cracker/chocolate bar/marshmallow concoction in its true form. Notice I did say “yet”.
So since I decided upon S’Mores but I wasnt going to haul out the grill and charcoal how was I supposed to make my patriotic dessert? I know, I’ll make them into cookies! I went to the store and got a few ingredients that I needed to make my cookies. As I was preparing to measure out my ingredients it struck me! Where are my chocolate chips? I know I bought them! I searched all my “baking stash spots” and not a chip was to be found! Now, if you have been experiencing hot weather like we have here in Ohio…a locked car is no place for chocolate chips to be stored. Gosh darn it…WHY oh WHY did my chips fall out of the bag and I didn’t realize it! See what happened…
Just a hot, melted mess! I was so tempted to toss the bag. I was just disgusted with myself for not seeing the bag in the car!!! UGH! I calmed down and said just let it solidify and chop it up, and that is what I did. The thing I learned about a block of milk chocolate is that it is super easy to chop! Did you know that?? I was able to have an assortment of sizes scattered throughout my cookie batter. Oh gosh! I’m getting ahead of myself!!! How can I fix this…uhm…shoot! Ok put a pin in this chocolate part of the story. Let’s walk over to the graham cracker part, shall we?
Ok, so I wanted the graham cracker flavor in my S’Mores cookie. You gotta have graham cracker right? But I didn’t want to smash-up graham crackers and all that stuff. I wanted to make the cookie entirely from scratch. I did research on homemade graham crackers and found I needed graham flour. That wasnt hard to find because Bobs Red Mill brand of flours and grains is everywhere now! I found the graham flour in a local store and didn’t have to go through all of that online stuff. So here we go, I switched the amount of flour called for in my chocolate chip cookie recipe and used a combo of graham flour and whole wheat pastry flour. The ONLY reason I used the whole wheat pastry flour is because I have too much of it. I had already purchased a bag and then I bought another not knowing that I’d already had some! So I’m trying to at least finish off one bag.
Now once I got everything mixed for my dough (insert chocolate chips back into story now lol) and gave it a little taste, I was SO happy! It tasted SO good! GoodT!!! I really liked having teeny, tiny bits of the milk chocolate mixed throughout the dough. Then the big chunks scattered in there too! Girlfriend! You have got something there! Then I thought ok, ok, do a test cookie and see how it bakes. I wanted my cookies to be big and thick, you know like those darn bakery cookies that are thick and big like a big ol’ pie but you eat the whole thing by yourself anyway. Huh? You don’t do that? I thought everyone did…gulp…am I supposed to share my big cookie?? 😦
Well anyway, my cookies deflated once they cooled!!! I. HATE. WHEN. THAT. HAPPENS!!! GRRRRRRR!!! Now when I bake them as regular chocolate chip cookies they remain somewhat fat once cooled. I have to take into consideration that a graham cracker calls for honey or molasses. So to try to keep the true graham cracker flavor for my S’Mores cookies I had to add that extra liquid. I think that was “one” of the reasons my cookies spread and deflated. I probably should have increased my flour in some way to compensate for the extra liquid. Even though the molasses is thick it was still additional liquid. Sheeeez, I just want to bake, now I see I’m going to have to get all scientific and stuff with my recipes. If I have this much liquid I need to balance it with this much dry ingredients…oh boy. I refrigerated the balls of dough prior to baking and that only helped a little. Now that I’m reflecting upon my experimental recipe there are some things that I’ll do differently the next time I make them. I will definitely make them again and when I get the recipe where I like it, I will share it. But for now, here is my version of S’Mores in cookie form. God Bless the USA!!!!
JWest Pastries Blog 