About a month ago, my parents took me to Citizen Cake in San Francisco, specifically for the S’mores Brownie. Delicious, is really all that I can say about it. The want to recreate it, in combination with a cancelled camping trip and therefore a lost opportunity for some epic s’mores making, lead me to make these brownies last night. I tried the old stand by of looking up the recipe online to try and find the exact Citizen Cake S’mores Brownie recipe, but alas, Elizabeth Faulkner has that recipe on lockdown. However, she does have a book containing all of the Citizen Cake recipes, Demolition Desserts. Naturally, I instantly bought it, but it won’t arrive until Aug.3-18 (quite the long range in estimated arrival, eh Amazon?). And yes, I did try “Looking Inside,” but it stops RIGHT before the S’mores Brownie recipe, so touche again, Elizabeth Faulkner. So, when it arrives I will most likely make the real thing, but last night I improvised.
I used Maida Hatter’s Palm Beach Brownie recipe (from Maida Hatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts) for the base brownie batter. By the way, I highly recommend that recipe. On it’s own, it makes one mean brownie. However, I modified her recipe by omitting the nuts, adding chocolate chips, graham cracker pieces, and marshmallows, and substituting the coffee with 2 Tablespoons of Kahlua. The original recipe creates more of a mocha brownie, but I figured that would detract from the traditional s’mores flavor that I wanted to retain, so I muted the coffee flavor a bit by using Kahlua, making the brownie a true Corrupt Cake brownie.
I realized after I filled the pan with batter and topping it off with marshmallows, that I completely forgot to take photos each step, but, just so you know, I made the batter, broke up some graham crackers and folded them into the batter, along with some mini chocolate chips. However, next time, I will use chocolate chunks or regular chocolate chips instead of mini chocolate chips so that when you bite into the brownie you can actually bite into some chocolate. I found that the mini chocolate chips got lost in the batter.
The Ingredients
Skipping a few steps... Ready to bake!
Fresh from the oven
One worry I had was that the marshmallows would burn in the oven, but as you can see, they browned beautifully! I was hovering next to the oven for the whole 35min of bake time just in case they got too brown and I would have to cover the top with aluminum foil, but luckily it worked out fine. I guess a watched pot never a boils, but a watched marshmallow never burns. (Okay, so thinking about that further, that saying doesn’t work …at all… as many a marshmallow has spontaneously combusted in front of me mid-roast over a fire, even while being carefully watched)
Finally, I decided to package a few of them up for my boyfriend and his new roommates as a housewarming present, so this sort of kills the surprise, but you guys will see, the real surprise is trying these things.
All packaged up for the boys!
Although, they’re not the real thing, these brownies turned about better than I thought they would. However, I can’t wait for Demolition Desserts to get here so I can make the real thing. In her recipe, she makes her own graham crackers and marshmallows, so I look forward to Corrupting that recipe further.
