Week 9 – S’more, s’more!

S’more Brownies

This week my only pre-requisite for choosing the recipe was to ‘make something my sister likes’.  This task isn’t as simple as it sounds as she is very fussy about food.  And has a nut allergy.  It’s surprising how many of the recipes in Home Sweet Home contain nuts.  She also doesn’t really eat fruit, or cookies due to a bad experience as a child with cookies with nuts in (that’s how we discovered she has a nut allergy)!  So the choice made itself really, as I fell upon the S’more Brownies page.  Brownie, fine, chocolate, fine, marshmallows, fine.  Being British I’ve never tasted a S’more, but as someone who has grown up on American books, tv shows and films, I’m aware of them as a campfire treat, consisting of marshmallow and graham crackers.  I have never been near a campsite, let alone a campfire, but I do love a good brownie.  The S’more brownie consists of a chocolate brownie base, a layer of digestive biscuits (we don’t have graham crackers in the UK), and a marshmallow topping.  I’m already salivating.

The bake

Take note, regular readers of this blog, that this time I followed the recipe ingredients exactly!  Except for one thing – I used 100g of dark chocolate instead of 120g.  But dark chocolate is pretty expensive, and most bars come in 100g blocks!  Sorry, two things – I used Stork margarine instead of unsalted butter.  But I use that as a butter substitute for most of my baking, except for when making buttercream frosting, as you can taste the butter in that!

As noted above, the S’more brownie has three main elements; brownie, biscuit, marshmallow.  And, to be honest, each of those steps is pretty simple.  The first step is to make the biscuit layer, by crushing digestive biscuits, and combining them with melted butter, in the same way you would the base for a cheesecake.

 

You put this to one side, then move on to the brownie mixture.  You start by melting butter and dark chocolate.  Most cookery books only give the bain marie method of melting it over a pan of hot water, but this book actually says about melting it in the microwave!  This is my preferred method, mainly as I don’t have a glass bowl to put over a saucepan.  You have to be careful not to burn the chocolate in the microwave – my tip is to only put it on medium heat, and in 30-45 second bursts.  Also, if after a few bursts it’s mostly melted but there are still a few lumps of chocolate, instead of putting it in for another 30 seconds and risk burning it, just stir it, and the heat tends to melt the rest.

Once the chocolate and butter is melted, the rest of the ingredients are added to the chocolate.  I had a couple of problems with this process – first one of the eggs cracked as I was trying to get it out of the egg box (egg white all over the kitchen), and after I’d mixed everything together a tube of coffee sweeteners fell into the mixture!  But eventually I had the brownie mixture, ready to go into the brownie tin.  The recipe tells you to line the tin with foil first, and make sure there’s enough foil sticking up at the edges.  Put the brownie mixture into the tin, then top with the biscuit.  You are meant to use an 8inchx12inch tin, but all I have is 8inchx8inch.  I hoped for the best.  Then bake for 30-35 minutes.  I cooked mine for 45 minutes as after 35 the middle was still raw, and even after 45 minutes it still didn’t pass the skewer test, but I had to persevere.

After the brownie is cooked, you top it with the marshmallows.  The brownie had risen quite a bit during cooking time, and the marshmallows were coming up right to the foil.  You then put the brownie tin back into the oven for the marshmallows to soften.  This is when all marshmallow-y hell broke loose, as I opened the oven door to see marshmallow oozing over all the edges, and a pool of molten marshmallow on the bottom of the oven, and dripping on the rack.  I put the tin onto a baking tray, and straight under the grill for the top to get the S’more chargrilled effect, but the marshmallow ooze-fest continued, leaving a not very aesthetically pleasing finished product.

I left it to cool/set for a good few hours before tucking in.  It looks quite impressive (in a disgusting kind of way), but it was a nightmare to cut from the foil, as the marshmallow had stuck to everything.  And the taste?  Underwhelming.  I’m not sure what it is, but it just doesn’t seem to have baked properly.  The brownie seems to be both over and undercooked.  The biscuit layer is soft rather than crunchy, and as so much of the marshmallow ended up over the sides, it’s quite a thin, yet sickly, layer.  I’m really disappointed, as this has been my first disaster from the book.  And my sister didn’t even like it!  Not that I really blame her.  I think the morals of this story are to make sure there’s plenty of excess foil around the edges, and if you have a smaller brownie tin than stated in the recipe, keep some back and make another batch, rather than cramming everything in.  Ah well, you live and learn. 

Hope you've had a more successful week of baking - happy baking!