Pinteresting Summer

Challenge 29- I'd Dip that in Chocolate

We are for the most part unpacked and I was at home most of the day waiting on the AT&T guy to come back and uncluster-F the Internet and TV, so I was home with time on my hands. Earlier this morning I had been laughing at a blog post from my favorite author about an Ambien filled epiphany she had had about dipping things in ranch (its pretty funny http://www.jennsylvania.com/jennsylvania/). I was inspired to dip food as well (in chocolate though, I just wasn't feeling the ranch today) and perused through my pin board to see what I could find.

Up first was Flame Free S'mores-
The first one was easy, I had all the ingredients, and its a classic. You take a pack of graham crackers, break them into single cookies, spread marshmallow cream between them, and dip them in melted chocolate. The first step is easy but can be a bit sticky trying to get the marshmallow cream on the crackers (don't go crazy putting on a ton either but I'll come back to that).

I have a Wilton Chocolate Melter Deluxe ($20 at Walmart and worth every penny) so all I had to do to melt the chocolate is turn in on and throw in the cubes of melting chocolate I bought at Albertsons. I ended up throwing in about 6 of the ice cube sized chocolate pieces and stirring them around with a silicon spatula until they were completely melted (about 8-10 minutes). You can melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler but I swear the melter is the easiest thing to use and a lot less messy and prone to user error.

With a quick dip and drag motion I covered all of the graham cracker marshmallow sandwiches and quickly put them back on the sheet of wax paper. The ones where I had gotten a little overzealous with the marshmallow cream ended up expanding out the side of the crackers and I had to wipe the side of the crackers with another silicon spatula.

They were easy and looked delicious. I made a rookie mistake and didn't put the wax paper on a tray first, so I had try and kind of slide them on the the tray and this made for a small mess and a less than attractive look for a couple of the S'mores.

I put these in the fridge to cool. I only had one sleeve of graham crackers so this yielded 18 sandwiches and I still had a bit of chocolate left. I refused to let good chocolate go to waste, so I hunted my pantry for other things I could dip in chocolate. I was out of pretzels (the next obvious choice) and nothing else sounded appealing until I saw my box of Cheerios. I had never had chocolate covered Cheerios before but it sounded pretty good. I pour in about a cup (possibly a cup and a half) of Cheerios into the pan and stirred it around until I saw most the chocolate seemed to be used up.

I pout this onto a wax paper sheet (which was already on a plate this time) and put that in the fridge to cool. The finished S'mores looked like this:

Very good and very easy. Not as good as a real S'more, don't get me wrong but in a pinch these would work great. Good for parties in the summer that don't have campfires, or when it's 103F at 9pm and you don't want to be anywhere near a fire. I expected them to be tasty and they were but the Cheerios were kind of a shot in the dark but it worked. It dried like peppermint bark and I broke it up into jagged peanut brittle like pieces. It was so yummy, the the flavor of the Cheerios and chocolate together were great and not exactly what you would expect. I have been forcing myself to not go back to the fridge to get more, because I could easily eat a the whole bowl.

Both of these were very easy (a bit time consuming) and turned out great. I'm saving my not so great chocolate dipping story for tomorrow, so you'll have to come back and check that one out.