What’s Better Than S’mores? A Giant S’mores Tart

I never was a Girl Scout, so I came late to s’mores. I was already a teenager when I squished my first blackened marshmallow between graham crackers and chocolate after awkwardly thrusting a skewer amid the glowing embers

Recipe: Oven S’mores

Since no one had schooled me in the finer points of smelting a s’more, like rotating the marshmallow to an even shade of toasty brown or letting the molten blob rest on the chocolate for a moment, my first s’more was incinerated and gloppy, hard bits of Hershey bar lacquered with gummy ash. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

I eventually gave s’mores another chance for the sake of my grade-schooler, after friends invited us for a weekend in the country. We stood around a proper bonfire, carefully turning marshmallows above, not in, the flames, hungrily watching the exteriors turn from golden, to brown, to lightly stippled with black but not at all burned.

Flattened between graham crackers and thin slabs of milk chocolate, the marshmallows oozed lushly onto their fudgy beds. I finally understood why the Girl Scouts named this treat “Some More” when they published the already popular recipe in their 1927 book, “Tramping and Trailing With the Girl Scouts” — though not without a warning. “Though it tastes like ‘some more,’” the guide admonishes, “one is really enough.”

Recipe: S’mores Tart