The weather down in Charlottesville is unpredictable. Oftentimes, half the week will be spent under piercing sunshine and half the week will be spent under a raincoat. So, when the weather flips out and decides to obstruct my path to the nearest spot where I can shamelessly purchase a cookie, I like to get creative.
This past Tuesday, when the sky wrung itself out like an overwatered sponge, I dug into my recipe box and pulled out instructions for the best warm treat I could bake without turning my dorm kitchen into a fire risk. It’s simple, it’s delicious — it’s s’mores cookies.
I grabbed a roll of Toll House cookie dough from my fridge, a box of off-brand cinnamon sugar graham crackers, three bars of Hershey's milk chocolate and a bag of marshmallows. Then my friends and I travelled downstairs to the communal stove, where we sat like predators waiting for the group of girls in front of us to finish up with their mini pizzas.
Using my brownie pan — which has since been stolen, so if anyone finds a glass baking dish lying around please help a sister out — my friends spread out a layer of graham crackers. We placed the sugared side face down in the pan so we could plop the cookie dough on top without making too big of a mess.
Once we had covered the entire bottom of the pan with graham crackers, we spread on the layer of cookie dough. We made it wide enough to coat the entire pan and thick enough to obscure from view each and every graham cracker. In all honesty, there was a little bit of dough that didn’t make it into the pan — there is just something about the taste of raw egg and uncooked flour that I can’t resist. Maybe it’s the risk of salmonella.
Once the dough was spread, I grabbed the chocolate bars. My friends set to work breaking them apart into the individual Hershey’s rectangles, and then together we covered the entire sheet of dough with a single layer of chocolate. None of the squares overlapped, but each bit of cookie was covered. In my experience, I have found this to be the best ratio of chocolate to cookie to graham cracker.
We popped the entire tray into the oven as per the cooking requirements on the back of the cookie dough roll. Nestlé says to bake for 10 or so minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, so this is what we did. I would trust Nestlé with my life.
While the s’mores cookies were in the oven, we set to work tearing the marshmallows in half. Then, when there was about one minute left on the clock, we pulled the pan back out of the oven.
Not a single one of my friends thought to bring oven mitts to college. Thus, to pull the pan out of the oven without burning ourselves, two of us were forced to remove our slippers. My roommate used hers to slide the sides of the dish off the metal grate, then I placed the plastic bottoms of mine under the pan to catch it. Teamwork really does make the dream work.
Before the cookies could cool, we added the halved marshmallows on top, with the sticky ripped-open sides touching the melted chocolate. We laid them about one inch apart from each other, over the entirety of the pan. Then we slid the cookies back into the oven for the final minute.
The trick with this last touch is to not count on the timer — in order to ensure that we neither burned nor under-toasted our marshmallow crust, we all sat on the floor with the oven light on and stared at the cooking marshmallows. We pulled the pan out again as soon as they had spread out and gone golden brown on top.
We let the cookies cool for about 10 minutes, and then they went under the knife. I cut them according to the graham cracker squares, so that when we all dug in we just had to grab a cookie, and the graham cracker base kept everything sturdy and easy to bite. The marshmallow made a mess, so I would recommend cutting the pieces with a plastic knife that can end up in the trashcan afterwards.
This was a perfect dish for a rainy afternoon. It only took about 20 minutes to complete, and there was more than enough to serve four people several times over. There was even enough for my voracious appetite, which would have been left unsated by a measly two or three cookies.
In total, we got nearly 20 decently-sized servings out of the pan. And here’s a pro-tip for people who like leftovers — the cookies were even better the second day after an overnight chill in the refrigerator.
For those ambitious few who like having the best of two worlds — both cookies and s’mores — I recommend this innovative dish. I also recommend washing and putting away the baking pan as soon as the treat has been consumed, instead of leaving it outside your dorm room for two months. Otherwise, someone might steal it.
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