(image from Alana Elliott at Flickr)
Last week, we invited some friends over for an evening campfire and s’mores. Everyone knows s’mores: graham crackers (blech), marshmallows (okay, getting better), and Hershey’s chocolate bars (yes! give me some). I bought the biggest, thickest Hershey’s bar I could find. I think it weighed 4.2 pounds (1.91kg).

Hershey’s is a smart company, and they know that anyone who has one of their smooth, delicious chocolate bars will be forced (by arm twisting and occasional use of The Rack) to share. For this reason, they mold their chocolate bars into an interesting collection of “mini bars” joined together by “connective chocolate.” The connective chocolate is an ambiguous gray zone that can never be divided equally. By the strictest rules of chocolate etiquette, the person entrusted with breaking the bar into its mini bar pieces must place uniform pressure on each mini bar and attempt to break them into pieces that differ by no more than .001mm in size. Most people cheat.

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Have you ever taken a bite out of a candy bar and thought “This is so wrong!” Do you feel that your love for all things candy is not adequately represented in any product on the market? Is there just a brilliant candy bar buried in your mind that your just waiting to see materialize one day?

If you, like me, answered yes to those questions, then you will understand why I am undergoing a process of creating my own candy bar. All too many times I have been disappointed by hollow promises of candy wrappers beguiling me into purchasing bad candy. No more excuses! I have decided to make my own bar so that way I control the quality of ingredients and make sure there is nothing in it that I don’t want.

Seeking inspiration for this bar, I turned to the month. August. Well… here in Austin, TX, it’s incredibly hot and humid, but that’s summer for you. And what says summer like going out into the woods and camping? And can you really camp anywhere without making s’mores? So in honor of all things woodsy and s’mores-related, I have concocted an inverted s’mores black forest bar that I call Lost in the Woods.

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(image from Threadless.com)

I’m not really a big fan of numbers. Or science. Or instruction manuals, for that matter. So I don’t really know if all the specs work out. But I do enjoy t-shirts. And I love s’mores. And since my affinity for the latter outweighs my disdain for the former at a ratio of exactly 7652:1 (did I do that right? Like I said, I’m really more for the candy than the math) I feel that puts me in the clear to adore this S’mores how-to shirt from Threadless.

My only concern? I have always – always – constructed my s’mores with the marshmallow on top of the chocolate square. Have they changed the rules since I took S’more 101? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, I don’t know that I’m willing to change. It’s pretty perfect that way. Despite this flaw, however, I am looking forward to the “more detailed instructions” promised to follow in S’more 201. Do you think that includes the introduction of additional ingredients? Because a thin layer of peanut butter spread beneath Graham Cracker Sheet #1 makes for an awesome advanced s’more.

• S’more 101 T-Shirt at Threadless T-Shirts

There is a special place in my heart (and digestive system) for marshmallows. I have always loved marshmallows and was the one kid out of 100 who actually liked Marshmallow Peeps. I even like to make my own marshmallows on occasion. So, I was thrilled to receive some gourmet, handmade marshmallows from Plush Puffs to review. Even better, Plush Puffs was kind enough to send me their newest flavor: Simply S’mores.

Plush Puffs come beautifully packaged, as you can see, and the individual marshmallows are in perfect bite-sized cubes. The Simply S’mores marshmallows start with Plush Puffs’ basic vanilla bean marshmallow, then are coated in cocoa powder and topped with some little chocolate nibs. Oh, and there are little bits of graham cracker inside the marshmallows! I have to say that while these don’t really taste like actual s’mores, they are a delicious standalone puff.

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I thought I’d try something different with this review… consider it a kind of “stream of consciousness” review. I’m going to write what comes to mind as I try the Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road.

The new Rockin’ Nut Road Snickers wrapper promises “almonds, caramel and marshmallow-flavored nougat wrapped in dark chocolate” – sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Opening it, there really is no real aroma at all. Biting into it, I see that the nougat is snow white so not only does it taste like marshmallow, it looks like marshmallow too. The one thing that hits me, besides the marshmallow taste, is that it’s not overly sweet like a regular Snickers can be.

The Rockin’ Nut Road Snickers is very s’mores-ish tasting and the almond gives it a similar consistency that graham crackers would. The almond flavor isn’t very strong though – the most prevalent flavor is the marshmallow nougat. I don’t really taste the caramel at all, which is a shame because I really love caramel. The choice to go with dark chocolate was a wise move – Snickers milk chocolate would have made it too sweet.

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