Campfire Classics

We grew up in the great outdoors. Our first family camping trip took place between San Jose, California and Reno, Nevada, and back. (It actually might have been our first American road trip too now that I think about it.) We were visiting our Aunt, Uncle, and cousins who live in Cali. It was quite an adventure for all of us. We rented a big conversion van so we all traveled together and stayed in a couple random camp grounds. We ate A LOT of Ramen, which was perfect because we had never had Ramen before and I didn’t OD on it again until college. So we ate Ramen and went camping and I used all my birthday money to buy Wedding Day Midge, who also came camping with us. Besides seeing tumbleweed for the first time and enjoying trying to wrap my 9 year old arms around a giant redwood, my favorite thing about our entire vacation was sitting around the campfire, telling a round robin story, and eating S’mores.

Our round robin stories always started with someone saying something and then the next person finishing off the thought and adding a new one until a story developed. For some reason, I still remember parts of one of those stories. Part of it might have been because it was SO outrageous and ridiculous or because I have this vivid image of the family sitting around the fire telling it. The main character was Barbie (I was nearing the end of my Barbie age, but she was still a part of our lives at that time) and she chose Peabody to be her boyfriend. (Peabody was one of the boys Barbie could choose in the 1950’s Barbie Prom game, which we played non-stop during that trip as well as a handful of times throughout my childhood. We never had it, but some of my awesome friends and family were the owners of this amazing board game.) There was some sort of accident/problem, but the moral of the story was “Always wear clean underwear when you leave the house because you never know what kind of trouble you’re going to get into.” (My dad may have gotten Barbie and Peabody whacked during that story, but the details are blurry.)

This moral and S’mores have stuck with me for almost 20 years, but this blog is not devoted to my undergarments, so lets move on to the other topic:
S’mores…
Nothing beats the taste of fire burned marshmallows between chocolate and graham crackers – so simple and so delicious.

I’ve dappled in s’more desserts in the past, including some super cute mini graham cracker cupcakes where we toasted the marshmallows over the stove and smashed them in between a halved cupcake with chocolate. They were quite interactive and pretty delicious, however, they weren’t overly complicated and using graham crackers would have been just as easy and delicious. I was also a S'more last year for Halloween, so our ties run deep.

My co-worker Tracy’s birthday was a week ago, and since we work in the outdoor industry I decided to track down a spin on S’mores and make her birthday cake. My friend Lauren sent me a recipe she found online for a S’more cake, so I decided to take my spin on it.

S’more Cake Adapted from Baking Bites
Graham Cracker Cake Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (If you buy a box of graham crackers it’s two enveloped packages so 2/3 of the box)
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup milk
3 large egg whites

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup Semi-sweet Chocolage Chips
¼ cup Half and Half
2 TBSP unsalted butter
2 TBSP corn syrup

Marshmallow Filling
1 – 7 oz jar Marshmallow Fluff

Graham Cracker Cake
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease 2 – 9” round cake pans with cooking spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
In a large bowl mix together the butter and sugar until it’s creamed together. Add the egg yolks and the vanilla.
In a smaller bowl mix together the graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt. Stir in a third of the graham cracker mixture with the butter and sugar, followed by half of the milk, alternating until you end with the graham cracker mixture.
In a separate bowl beat the egg whites to soft peaks.
Fold the egg whites into the graham cracker mixture in two batches, making sure it’s folded in completely with no white streaks.
Divide evenly into pans.
Bake for about 24 minutes until it’s dense and a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cakes cool for a couple minutes before dumping them and let them finish cooling on a wire rack.

Chocolate Frosting
Using a double boiler melt the chocolate chips and butter until smooth. While still under the flame add the corn syrup and stir until combined. Turn the heat off on the double boiler and add the half and half. Stir until smooth. It has more of a ganache consistency than a thick frosting.

Assembly
Place one layer of the cake, bottom side up, on a plate. Spread half of the chocolate ganache/frosting over the top of the bottom layer. Spread the entire layer of fluff on top of the chocolate. The fluff is not easy to spread. It kind of glops on and is a sticky mess.
Stack the next graham cake layer on top of the fluff. Spread the rest of the chocolate frosting over the top of the cake layer. It looks awesome if the chocolate drips down the side of the cake.

I made the cake the night before I took it to work and stuck it in the fridge overnight. Something about the fluff makes it a little volatile. Overnight, the entire top of the cake slid off the top and did not look like the nice stack it had been when I put it in the fridge at night. Because I had stuck it in the fridge, the fluff was not only sticky, but kind of hardened too, which made shifting the top half back onto the cake a little difficult. The cake continued to do this off and on while it was in the process of being eaten. I think it only took 2 days to polish it off…so it wasn’t overly annoying. I’d probably increase the chocolate frosting when I make this again so I can pour the frosting over the fluff as well as underneath it and on the top of the cake. It might help keep the marshmallow encased and help it from sliding. I thought that maybe I frosted the cake while the frosting was too warm and that caused the marshmallow to slide, however, it kept happening so I don’t think that’s the reason.

I know Barbie and Peabody would have loved to go on a date at the soda shoppe and eat S’more cake and I think you’d like it too. Just remember to wear clean undies.

This may not be the most flattering angle...but you get the point. I love S'mores!