S'Mores Bars

A few weeks ago my sweet tooth kicked into overdrive right before bed.  I had to have a s'more.  Now.  So, I pranced into the kitchen, prepared to make a microwave s'more.  Classy, I know. 

When I opened the freezer to pull out a chocolate bar, there were none.  I had seven chocolate bars in there.  SEVEN.  And they were all gone.  All. Seven. Of. Them.  I was not a happy camper. 

So, I had two choices.  I could be a big kid and run to the store and grab a chocolate bar to make my s'mores.  Or, I could pout.  So, I pouted my way right back to bed.  

I woke the next morning with s'mores on the brain.  And they stayed there all day.  Clearly, this was not going to go away until I did something about it.  I headed over to one of my favorite food blogs, The Girl Who Ate Everything, to see if she had any s'mores recipes I should try.  Of course she did.  She has everything.  But, just one s'mores treat wasn't enough for this girl.  Nuh uh.  Nope, I needed two.  So I made these S'mores Bars and I also made her S'mores Cookies.  I'll post that recipe later.  Here's the info on these delicious S'mores Bars:

Slightly adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything

Here's what I used:
 

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 king-sized Hershey's milk chocolate bars
1 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff (7 1/2 oz jar)

Here's what I did:

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and sprayed an 8 inch square baking pan with cooking spray.

First I mixed together the flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.  I set those dry ingredients to the side.  Next I creamed the butter and sugar together.  Then I beat in the egg and vanilla.  I slowly added the dry ingredients into the wet ones until everything was mixed well. 

I pressed about half of that dough into the bottom of my greased pan.  I broke up my chocolate bars into pieces that would fit into the pan and covered the bottom dough with chocolate (only one layer deep).  You could use more or less chocolate, depending on your tastes.  I thought this amount worked out just right for me.

 Then I spread the marshmallow fluff on top of the chocolate bars.  Finally, using parchment paper, I made a square out of the remaining dough that was roughly the size of my pan.  I transferred that square on top of the marshmallow fluff for the top layer.  

I baked the bars for about 35 minutes.  Don't let your crust get too brown or too well done.  This is what mine looked like fresh out of the oven:

You do want to let the bars cool before you cut them, but I think these bars and infinitely better if eaten warm.  So if they aren't still warm when you go to bite into them, toss them in the microwave for just a few seconds.  It's totally worth the wait.

The original recipe provided that this pan would make 16 bars.  I found these bars to be very rich and couldn't eat an entire bar if I only divided the pan into 16 pieces.  I ended up cutting mine into about 24 different bars.  Make your bars whatever size you prefer.

Enjoy!