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S'mores Dessert Bowls

Summer nostalgia is in full-swing around here, and I’ve got a list that’s practically a mile long of recipes I wanted to churn out for the blog this summer. Realistically, that means I can only share nine summer recipes so I’m going to have to be extremely picky when it comes to choosing what to post. That’s one of the downsides of blogging. I mean, I could share more than one recipe a week just to get a few more out, but nah. Less is more. That’s my motto for 2018 which is halfway over!

Usually, I share a cookie recipe the last Wednesday of the month, but because it’s been so dang hot, I haven’t wanted to use the oven. I’ll definitely have a cookie recipe next month and it’s one of my favorite’s to bake around the holiday’s as it’s a great cookie swap cookie.

As for today’s recipe, we’ll be revisiting a childhood staple: s’mores! And it's just in time for your 4th of July celebrations!

My version doesn’t involve roasting marshmallows on a hot wire over a campfire and the sticky hands that usually comes with making s'mores. I like to think of these s’mores as grown-up s’mores. They’re kind of classy, almost elegant if you think about it. In place of the traditional Hershey’s bar 🍫, is a generous serving of chocolate pudding, which I use in my chocolate Oreo trifle. It’s easily the best and my most-used chocolate pudding recipe, so if you haven’t tried it yet, now is the perfect chance (plus you’ll have leftover pudding!)

Still sandwiched between graham crackers, these s’mores dessert bowls are reminiscent of traditional s’mores. If you’re the sort of person who enjoys peanut butter or caramel in your s’mores, you can still add those flavors to the mix. You can swirl in peanut butter or caramel into the chocolate pudding layer, or, simply ad a dollop of it on top of the chocolate pudding, acting as a buffer between the chocolate and marshmallows.

If you’re short on time, you don’t have to make pudding from scratch. In fact, you can even buy Hershey’s Instant Pudding, which surprisingly tastes pretty similar to the candy bar and is a decent substitute for pudding made from scratch that kids will devour without giving it a second thought.

When I started playing around with variations of s’mores, I didn’t want to deviate too far from the original I’d fallen in love with as a kid. When I wasn’t at a swim meet somewhere in California or Nevada, my family was at the lake spending the days boating and getting sunburned, and the evenings grilling up a storm with the families we spent our summers with. For us kids, s’mores were the reward for not being jerks all day, and let’s face it when you’re dealing with pre-teens and moody know-it-all teenagers, that’s quite impressive. Since poison oak, poison ivy and fireweed (which is way worse than the other two in my opinion) was prevalent, there wasn’t an option to go off into the oak-trees to find the perfect roasting stick. We had to use stretched out metal hangers which burned our hands if we weren’t careful. Maybe that was our parents' way of teaching us our first cooking lessons. 🤷🏼‍♀️

While this version might not leave the same mess behind, it’s certainly a fantastic dessert to create new memories with. If you’re on the quest for a summertime dessert that isn’t a fruit crumble or cobbler that will be the perfect finale to your backyard barbecue fiesta, look no further than these s’mores dessert bowls sure to be a crowd-pleasing summer dessert!

So, how do you like your s'mores?