Grown up S'Mores

If you are new to my blog, I publish a recipe every Sunday!

I was invited to a friend’s house the other day for an evening of Rummikub and offered to bring along a desert. I wanted to make something fun and, since we would be playing and eating simultaneously, something that would be eaten with no silverware. I had this idea for a takeoff on S’mores. They were very tasty and everyone loved them. I’m no food stylist so please forgive my photograph. They actually looked a lot better in person!



First, make the pastry. The trick to making pastry is to work quickly and keep everything as cold as possible. My “go to” pastry recipe is from Julia Child and, if you have a food processor, absolutely foolproof. I adapted it for this recipe.

Preheat the oven to 350°

1 cup ground up graham crackers (this worked out to be exactly one of the interior packages of crackers from the box), I broke them up and then pulverized them in the food processor to get graham cracker “flour”.
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 ½ sticks chilled, unsalted butter
2 tablespoons shortening
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup, more or less, iced water

Chocolate chips
Mini-Marshmallows

Of course you can make the dough by hand or in an electric mixer. But the food processor is sensationally fast and foolproof using these proportions. Proceed as follows: with metal blade in place, measure the flours (plain and graham cracker) into the bowl of the machine, cut the butter rapidly into thick-ish (1/4”) slices, and drop into the flour, along with the sugar, shortening and salt. Using the pulse, at about ½ seconds per pulse, give it 7 or 8 pulses, just to start breaking up the butter. Then, with the water poised over the opening of the machine, turn it on and pour in all but 1 tablespoon of the iced water. Pulse in spurts, just until the dough begins to mass together but is still rough, with some unformed bits. Turn it out onto your work surface and mass together rapidly with the heel of one hand into a somewhat rough cake. Dough should be pliable – neither dry and hard nor sticky. Pat in a little more flour if sticky; or water if hard and then reform into a cake. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour to congeal the butter and to allow the flour particles to absorb the water. You can actually leave it in the fridge, tightly wrapped, for up to three days or you can freeze it. Note: if you replace the cup of graham cracker flour with all-purpose flour, this is a great pastry for any purpose. I use it for both sweet and savory applications.

After the dough is chilled, roll it out to about 1/8” thick and cut it with a 3” circle cutter. A biscuit cutter would work well. I actually use an empty Talenti Gelato container! Place your circles on a sheet pan, which is lined with a piece of parchment paper.

Place 8 or 9 chocolate chips in the center of each circle of graham cracker pastry. Fold the edges of the pastry circle up, pleating and pinching as you go around. This is the same construction as the large crostata or rustic tart recipe I published a few weeks ago, just in miniature.

Place the sheet pan with the little tarts in the oven for approximately 15 minutes, or until the pastry is getting crisp. Take the sheet pan out, top the tarts with 3 or 4 mini-marshmallows and then stick it back in the oven until the marshmallows melt, approximately 5 minutes. Remove the tarts from the oven, place on a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

I finished off my grown-up S’mores by drizzling with 1 cube of melted bittersweet chocolate. I usually need to add a little oil to the chocolate to get it to a good drizzling consistency. I think I got about 18 or 20 tartletts out of this recipe.

This original recipe is a little rough as it is actually a work in progress. Hopefully I didn’t leave anything out!