Crackers!

I made graham crackers. 

What a pain in the ass.  Mixing the dough is no different from making a sugar cookie, but this dough is soft and sticky, and maddening to roll out.  You chill it for several hours prior to firm it up, but once you begin the rolling  it once again becomes soft and sticky.

It makes cutting them into neat squares and transferring to baking sheets a real trial in patience.  I made one batch of two different recipes and have rolled and cut one of them.  I am hoping the other recipe yields a dough easier to work with.

Marshmallows, on the other hand, are fairly easy to make.  Assuming you have a mixer and a thermometer, you can do this.  I would suggest you place a bath towel on an otherwise empty counter when you dust the pan and marshmallow mixture with powdered sugar, and again when you cut then out—makes cleanup a lot simpler.

I am, of course, making S’mores, but before I talk about that I want to pass on something you might not know.  Graham crackers are made (at least in part) with a form of whole wheat flour known as graham flour.  In graham flour, the germ, bran and endosperm are separated, ground, then recombined.

Each part is ground to a slightly different texture so the end result is different than standard whole wheat flour where all parts are ground at once.  The flour was created by Dr. Sylvester Graham, who promoted a diet rich in vegetables and grains.

Did you ever see the movie “The Road to Wellsville”?  It was the (more or less) fact-based story of the man who founded Kellogg’s.  I mention this since he and Sylvester Graham had a similar outlook on diet, and behavior.   The crackers made from Dr. Graham’s flour were intended to reduce the desire to have sex. 

I guess this is why you rarely hear about orgies breaking out at Girl Scouts’ gatherings.

The interesting thing about this period in time when Graham, Kellogg, and others were trying to discourage sex is that it was the same general time when vibrators (administered by trained professionals) were used on women to cure depression, anxiety and various other ailments.  I’ll bet that was far more successful than the crackers of abstinance.

Maybe if you eat graham crackers straight-up it does cut down on sexual desire, but I don’t think combining them with melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow is going to.  Anytime you have to lick yourself clean someone is bound to get excited. 

I suppose a lot of people would  insist a s’more must be made from store-bought marshmallows and graham crackers, and a plain Hershey bar not some high-faltutin’ dark chocolate on homemade crackers.  And they must be made over a camp fire, not under a broiler or with a blowtorch.

I am not one of those people. I had s’mores maybe once or twice when I was kid;  they may be a summertime tradition for many people but I am not among them, so I have no problem breaking with that tradition. 

I am taking my s’mores to a party Saturday, you can expect a recipe post shortly thereafter.  Even if you opt to use store-bought crackers you should make the marshmallows.  They have a very different texture, and being generous with the vanilla makes them so very tasty, too.  Oh, and you can use other extracts and flavorings, too!