After dinner on Memorial Day, we raided the pantry my mom had geniusly stocked with s’more ingredients. There were old-fashioned grahams, bars of good dark chocolate, and the most enormous marshmallows I have ever seen. They were double, triple, maybe quadruple the size of regular-sized marshmallows. I was intimidated-they were massive-but they turned out to roast into the most perfectly golden s’more fillers, since they held their own a bit better beside the embers of the grill. They burst into full-blown marshmallow fires only rarely.
At the camp I went to (an all-girls camp with uniforms and no electricity in the bunks and the place where I spent some of the happiest summers of my life), every Sunday night we had a campfire. Some Sundays that meant hot dogs, other Sundays it was burgers by the beach, but it always culminated in 180 girls gathering around the campfire to roast marshmallows before singing every campfire song known to man in a not-quite-right harmony punctuated by my loud, off-key tones. And every Sunday, just before we lined up to crown our roasting branches with marshmallows, the head counselor delivered a lecture. A lecture in the form of a horror story about a camper named Eva who lit her marshmallow on fire, and, instead of blowing out the flames with a dainty little exhale, she flung the marshmallow-loaded stick around, hoping the air would put out the fire. Instead, her roasting stick turned into a catapult, and the burning marshmallow hit her face, and, well, seared her eye shut.
Eva was okay, so the story went. No matter how many times we heard that mostly true tale, we never lost our appetite for roasting marshmallows, and we never stopped swinging them around when they caught on fire. The alternative was some counselor on marshmallow firefighter patrol blazing over to blow on your marshmallow, and that was kind of weird.
Though I never developed any neuroses about grilling or campfires and I still love a good blackened marshmallow-carcinogens or no-when we’re in the city, we’re grill-less. But that doesn’t mean we have to be s’more-less. Not when we have trusty chocolate bark. This bark requires one step more than most of my go-to’s. Essentially, I make two separate barks-chocolate with marshmallows and white chocolate with graham-and swirl them together before they cool. When I go to cut the bark into candy-sized pieces, I make sure to get a little of both white and dark in each piece.
Some more s’mores:
S’more Ice Cream Sandwiches from YumSugar
No-Bake Peanut Butter S’More Bars from How Sweet Eats
S’mores Brownies from Brown-Eyed Baker
S’mores Cupcakes from Pastry Affair
Ooey Gooey Peanut Butter S’mores Bars from Whipped
S’mores Mini Dippers from Kevin and Amanda
**Recipe**
S’more Chocolate Bark
Makes about 40 pieces
You can also use bars of chocolate-white and dark. You’ll need about 12 ounces. Chop well and then measure.
Ingredients
2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips
2 cups good-quality white chocolate chips (ingredient list must contain cocoa butter)
2 cups chopped graham crackers
2 cups mini marshmallows
Melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler or in 20-second intervals in the microwave. You want it to be just melted—don’t let it bubble or burn. As it’s melting, stir it occasionally with a heatproof spatula.
Remove the dark chocolate from the microwave or the heat, and add the marshmallows. Stir to coat them all with chocolate. Let sit for a moment while you make the white chocolate combo.
Melt the white chocolate in a second double boiler or in 20-second intervals in the microwave. Same as before-you want it to be just melted, don’t let it bubble or burn. As it’s melting, stir it occasionally with a heatproof spatula.
Remove the white chocolate from the microwave or the heat, and add the chopped graham. Stir to coat them all with chocolate.
Spoon the white chocolate in a random pattern on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Then repeat with the dark chocolate-marshmallow combo, filling in the gaps. Put the sheets in the freezer or fridge and let the bark sit until hardened. This should take about 1 hour in the freezer, slightly more in the fridge.
Using a knife, cut the bark into bite-size pieces that include both white and dark chocolate. Store in the fridge until ready to serve.
