Molly's S'mores Dip

Tired of making s'mores outside? Here's your solution!

I've already told you guys how much I love s'mores. I love them so much, I found a way to enjoy them even when there's three feet of snow on the ground and more on the way with s'mores hot chocolate! So needless to say, when I discovered there's a way to enjoy s'mores indoors, without the hassle of building a fire or using leftover coals from a grill, I was pretty excited. Between the mugginess and buggyness of mid to late summer, sometimes it's just not fun to stand around outside making dessert when you could be hiding indoors, and s'mores cooked over a fire can definitely be a little tough to put together, especially if you've got little kids who already have melted chocolate and marshmallow all over them.

This is a pretty neat solution, and it's really pretty brainless to make - always a good thing! It's also a great way to turn what seems like a purely summer time (or at least nice weather time) dessert into something that can be enjoyed any time of year, which I'm certainly not complaining about!

For those of you who weren't around last time we made a s'mores themed treat, let's have a little refresher course: s'mores were invented sometime before 1925, which is pretty much the first time we really have written evidence of the treat being made. They've been a popular campfire treat since then, often appearing in Boy and Girl Scout handbooks with instructions on how to make them. My favorite version of s'mores ever hands down goes to the Prime Time Cafe in Walt Disney World, which I can devour in about two minutes if you let me get away with it. Once, my brother got up to use the bathroom before dessert came, and came back a few minutes later wondering if dessert had shown up yet. It had - I'd already eaten the whole thing.

Now, sometimes when people boast that a recipe is easy and easy to customize using whatever ingredients you want, or have on hand, it turns out they're totally lying. This one definitely made me a little anxious because I've had some previous bad experience with melting chocolate in the microwave or on the stove and winding up with burnt, horribly caramelized stuff that's impossible to clean out of whatever poor bowl I'd decided to use. Since I was going to be using our cast iron skillet, it was even more of an issue, because I really didn't want to ruin it if the chocolate ended up burning, and you've got to take care of how you clean cast iron to make sure it doesn't rust.

Fortunately, everything went smoothly. There are about a hundred different versions of this recipe floating around on the internet - a quick Google search will show you some from Food Network, Pintrest and other blogs, all of which have a slightly different spin on it. I kind of made up my own recipe instead of sticking with one particular one, although I did take my heating instructions from a few of them, just to make sure I didn't cause a disaster. Since I wanted this to be a truly authentic s'mores experience, I broke up several large Hersey's chocolate bars and arranged them in the skillet. It's about two cups of chocolate all together.

Next, I grabbed some marshmallows out of the pantry and sprinkled them on top. The larger marshmallows I sliced in half with a knife before arranging them at the suggestion of one of the other recipes to make sure they'd cook evenly, and tried to make sure they were covering most of the chocolate.

Once you've got that set up, the whole skillet goes in the oven at about 450 degrees for around nine minutes. Hersey's chocolate has a notoriously low melting temperature (my bars were actually a little soggy seeming even just from sitting out on the counter, and it wasn't an especially hot day) and so when I pulled out my pan after nine minutes, the marshmallows were nice and golden, and the chocolate was totally gooey.

Obviously this is something you can eyeball if your chocolate doesn't melt as fast or if you like your marshmallows a little darker, but I'd definitely recommend watching it like a hawk and being ready to pull it even if your marshmallows aren't black and crunchy on top. Burning the chocolate kind of ruins the fun!

Any chocolate that hasn't melted by the time it's out of the stove will definitely cook down pretty quickly while you're letting it cool. I'd definitely recommend letting it sit for a while before diving in, especially if you have people who might not be careful about avoiding touching your pan.

Snap up some graham crackers for dipping, and you're pretty much good to go!

Some of the marshmallows I used turned out to be a little bit stale, so the topping was probably a little harder than it necessarily should have been, and the graham crackers we were using seemed extra crumbly, so sometimes they'd snap a bit while you were trying to get the dip out of the pan, but overall? This was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. It's got all the best parts of a s'more without any of the 

That said, it's definitely still pretty messy. If you're doing this with kids, make sure you've got some napkins or plates on hand for them to hold under the graham crackers so you don't get chocolate all over the place. This version of the recipe also makes a lot of dip, so it's a good thing to make when you've got a lot of people over, but if you want to scale back and make a personal portion? That's totally feasible.

Overall, I'm super happy with how this turned out, and I would absolutely make it again. If you're ever in the mood for a s'more, but can't get outside to make one, this is a great solution to the problem. Give it a shot!

Unfortunately, it's another really easy dessert I can now torment myself with when I'm in the mood for something chocolatey!