Let me tell you a story about the 4th of July. Thanks to Martha
Stewart, I had the grand plan of making home made graham crackers with a
star cookie-cut out of half of them so I could have adorable 4th of
July themed s'mores (which, by the way, is a 1 syllable word! Don't let
anyone tell you it's 'sa-mores'!).
This is not what I ended up with.
Problem 1: I couldn't find an appropriately sized star cookie cutter and was not feeling crafty enough to make one myself. Therefore, the star idea went out the window. Sadly I had wasted many hours searching all stores within a several mile radius for said cookie cutter. I bought 4 ones that didn't work though! Now I'm prepared for the next crafty cookie cutter project. Similarly, I did not have a 3" square cookie cutter with cute edges, but I figured I'd sort it out once I got to that part.
Now, since I was out of luck on the star bit, I decided I needed to patriotize the s'mores somehow. I therefore decided that red, white, and blue marshmallows were the way to go. I looked into making the marshmallows from scratch, but decided that gelatin freaks me out, and that I was low on time anyway. Instead, I decided to dye the marshmallows red and blue! Brilliant, right? Turns out, you can't just dye marshmallows. Since they are highly sugary, they will just dissolve and get all gross if you dip them in dye. So what did I have to do, you ask? I had to get a paintbrush and slowly hand paint each marshmallow in phases, trying to prevent the outside from melting off in the process. It was awesome (read: time consuming but actually pretty entertaining...watched Thor while I worked). So now I have red, white, and blue marshmallows!!!! And it was actually kind of successful. All that's left to do is make the graham crackers. Easy, right?
Have you ever had an instinct that you ignored? Don't do it. As I was putting double the dry ingredients into a bowl, since clearly 16 s'mores was not enough and I needed 32, I thought to myself, 'Well jeez, that looks like an awful lot of dry ingredients. I wonder if this is going to be too much for my poor mixer. Oh well! Onward, ever onward!' Mistake. Once I got the wet ingredients into the mixer, I wa increasingly aware that this might not pan out as hoped. I added the dry to the wet, and was only supposed to mix until just combined. My mixer was NOT having it. There was just too much volume, and since this was a very dry mix, it never came together right. Argh, should have listened to myself.
Now, the cause of the next bout of difficulties is two fold. One: shouldn't have doubled the recipe. Two: I don't know how big an inch is, much less and eighth of an inch. So I was supposed to take the 'mixture' out of the bowl, form a big ol mound of it, and then roll it out to be refridgerated. But you see, as I should not have doubled the recipe, it wasn't quite all mixed together right, so I had graham cracker crumbs EVERYWHERE and the mound was more crumbly sand castle-y in texture. Besides which, there was wayyyy too much of it to roll out to 1/8th of an inch thick in one place. So I quartered the mound and tried to roll it out. But what flat thing do I have to pack this stuff flat on to? Why, nothing but my cookie sheets. And what do I need to eventually bake things on? Well, one would have hoped said cookie sheets, but no.
What was very fun at this point is that I am supposed to roll this stuff out, fridge for x amount of time, cookie cut it, place it on its baking surface, and then fridge, with each piece at least an inch from any other, for y amount of time, and then cook. So I'm trying to do this with 4 separate batches cause I was silly enough to double the recipe and not realize the epic amounts of dough I would have to deal with. Also, reminder: I don't have a cookie cutter. So I'm just cutting these things with a knife and trying to use a spatula to get them out. Also, also: since the dough never came together quite right on account of doubling, these things are NOT coming up in nicely cut squares as desired. They are flaking and breaking and falling. Holy b'jezes. Running around my tiny tiny kitchen, making a mess of everything. Also, I think these things are at least twice as thick as they are meant to be. Gah!
Now, to bake them, I have them in the bottom of 9x13 pans, on top of mini-muffin pans with wax paper on them, basically in the fridge/oven in/on anything I can find cause the darn cookie sheets are already in use. Rotating things in and out of the fridge, trying not to let anything get too warm and melty or cold and hard. Sooooo special. I finally, after what I'm sure could have qualified as some serious Lucy time, cooked em all off. Burnt some, naturally, cause they are all different thicknesses and sizes. I was so bummed about the whole thing that I didn't want to take them to the 4th of July parties. I thought they were just awful. Wayyyyyy too hard for s'mores making, slightly burnt, and somewhat ugly. They ended up more like graham cracker shortbread cookies than graham crackers per se. I was convinced by Marc and Lokes, though, that they still tasted good, so off to the parties I went, s'mores ingredients in hand.
In the end, I do think they were too shortbready for s'mores, although we made em and ate em anyway. There was a reason they should have been 1/8th of an inch thick. They were really tasty though! If I were to do it all over, naturally I would not double the recipe. Also, I would find a ruler. Next: I think I might intentionally let them get a little stale, cause they were softer that way. Regardless, grand adventure, and now I know to trust my instincts. If it looks like too much for my love, the KitchenAid, to handle, then it is definitely too much for me to handle.
One point in favor of the recipe itself: Bryon asks me, upon trying, what is in them. I started to go down the list: flour, toasted wheat germ, cinnamon, butter, yadda yadda. He stops me and says, 'Ok, good good. I just thought maybe you had ground up graham crackers and put a little butter in there and recooked them.' I guess that means that texture aside, they really did taste like graham crackers, which is awesome.
I didn't take any pictures of the tastiness, but Lokes did, so as soon as I get them from her, I'll be posting em! :)
Next time: either the 4 layer cake of craziness or car bomb cupcakes. So many stories to tell!
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