No campfire is complete without s'mores. That delicious combination of warm, gooey marshmallows that have been roasted over an open fire and chocolate that's beginning to melt from the heat of the marshmallows sandwiched between two crisp graham crackers is one of the finest flavor combinations ever created if you ask me. There's nothing you can do to make them any better. Or, is there?

History of S'mores

Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
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No one is quite sure who we can thank for creating this mouth-watering masterpiece in the first place, but according to Food & Wine, the first official s'more recipe was printed by Loretta Scott Crew in the 1927 Girl Scout guidebook Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. It calls "for 16 graham crackers, eight bars of plain chocolate and 16 marshmallows." After toasting the marshmallows the recipe says to "put the marshmallow on top of a chocolate bar and in between two graham crackers" to create a "Some More."

However, Food & Wine says the combination of chocolate and marshmallow dates back way before 1927.

Victorian-era funeral cakes, specially prepared upon the death of a loved one, sometimes included chocolate and marshmallow...Mallomars, which are essentially s'mores in cookie form, first appeared on shelves in 1913. Moonpies debuted a few years later and are also basically a s'more cousin.

The S'mores Hack You Must Try on Your Next Camping Trip

Even the perfect recipes can be open to a little tinkering. A friend of mine, who's a member of a camping group on Facebook, recently saw a post in that group offering this suggestion for shaking things up a bit around the campfire. Instead of using graham crackers and chocolate bars, replace them both with these:

Walmart
Walmart
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Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies are perfect for s'mores because the chocolate (in this case, chocolate fudge) is built into the cookie. All you have to do is slap a big, fat, gooey, roasted marshmallow in between two of them and shove them in your mouth hole. Not that it takes much effort or time, but this saves you from breaking a graham cracker in two and snapping chunks of chocolate off a candy bar. Meaning, you get to chow down sooner.

I have tried this on camping trips in the past. Does it make constructing a s'more easier? Yes. Is it good? That would also be a yes. Is it better than an original s'more? Like any type of food, that depends on your taste. While I grew up eating Fudge Stripes and still love them to this day, it's a shortbread cookie, not a graham cracker. Personally, I like the flavor a honey-flavored graham cracker brings to a s'more, so I'll give it a slight edge over the Fudge Stripes version. With that said, if someone offered me a s'more made with Fudge Stripes, I would happily accept it and enjoy it in a heartbeat.

Other Possible S'more Combinations

Walmart.com / Canva
Walmart.com / Canva
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The idea of using Fudge Stripes to tweak a s'more opens up a whole world of other possibilities for putting a new spin on this classic. Since it was a Girl Scout Troop leader who wrote the official recipe, how about making s'mores with some of those famous Girl Scout cookies? Tell me a soft, warm marshmallow between two chocolate-covered Peanut Butter Patties (my personal favorite) doesn't sound amazing. Or, how about sandwiching one between two Thin Mints? Frankly, you could grab a package of nearly any cookie in the cookie aisle at your grocery store and use them for s'mores. Oreos, Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies, the possibilities are as endless as the cookie aisle.

Experiment and enjoy!

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