Gobbling gooey, chocolatey, crunchy s’mores round the campfire is a quintessential part of any North American camping trip, but if you didn’t grow up camping – or in North America, for that matter – you might not have the faintest idea how to make them. Not to worry though, s’mores are an easy camping dessert that you can whip up on any camping trip to delight folks of all ages and satisfy any sweet tooth. We walk you through how to make s’mores in this article, including where they originated and what ingredients you can substitute if you're not in the US, with an easy technique that you can use over the campfire, double-burner stove or grill or even a gas stove at home.
What are S’mores?
If you grew up eating s’mores, this might seem like a silly question and you can just jump ahead to the recipe if you want, but for the rest of you, s’mores are a dessert sandwich made using cookies in place of bread and roasted marshmallows and chocolate for the filling. The word 's’more' is a contraction of 'some more' which is kind of a dumb name but it’s what you’ll be asking for after you’ve had your first one, trust us.
According to Food & Wine magazine, the first official recipe for smores came out in 1927, in a Girl Scout guidebook titled Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. It seems likely, however, that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts in the US and Canada had been quietly enjoying these sweet treats for some time before the publication. Today, they are about as common to the American camping trip as eating turkey is to Thanksgiving and unlike some more dubious American traditions (ahem, marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes), these are seriously worth a go.
How to make s'mores
There are three main ingredients to a classic s’more:
- Graham crackers
- Milk chocolate
- Marshmallows
Sounds simple enough, but if you’re outside of North America, you may not easily be able to find graham crackers, which are just a kind of plain cookie. In the UK, rich tea biscuits make a fine substitute, even if they’re circular instead of rectangular, while in other places, just look for a plain biscuit that you might dunk in your tea or coffee.
If you’re camping, you’ll want to build a campfire first, then after dinner, grab your best camping chairs and ingredients and huddle round the fire to follow these steps.
- Break the graham cracker into its two squares and set them on a camping plate or a rock.
- Break off a square of chocolate so that it fits on one of the graham crackers.
- Place a marshmallow on a stick and roast it to your liking (we’re not here to judge those of you that love a charred mallow).
- Carefully place the roasted marshmallow on top of the chocolate. Use the second graham cracker on top of the marshmallow to extract the stick.
- Eat it like a sandwich, taking care of the hot marshmallow.
- Make some more.
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