Caramel oatmeal bars

A month or so ago I was craving a simple dessert, but lacking inspiration.  I started flipping through my old binder full of hand written recipes that I started over a decade ago (does anyone else feel nostalgia for hand written recipes? or am I the only one to do that still...), looking for some old forgotten recipes I used to love.  I came across a bunch of simple classics that I had forgotten about, that made a great distraction from my macaron obsession.

There are a great number of classic, simple, reliable recipes - the kind that used to be a standard on the side of brand name candy and cereal bags.  For some reason these recipes seem to have been forgotten by the road side as everyone strives for new creative or fancy desserts, and I'm excited to start cooking through these again.  I love the reliability and consistency from these recipes, and they often bring back fond childhood memories, like making a mess in the kitchen.

S'more bars

Graham crackers have not made it to the UK yet, so of course s'mores don't exist here either.  They are one of those things I did not eat often in the states, however as soon as I can't have them...

One of my class mates brought over these soft graham cookies last summer and they were delicious!  I hadn't realized that baking a cookie with the flavor of graham crackers was soo easy (homemade graham crackers just didn't seem worth the effort).  These cookies are definitely worth making and eating on their own - but of course I figured they might be improved by adding in chocolate and marshmallows.

I tried a few variations of stuffed cookies, then found that a bar cookie was less effort, and allowed a better distribution of chocolate and marshmallows in every bite. Luckily none of my friends complained at having to try 4 or 5 variations of these cookies over the last few weeks... I used milk chocolate in my last edition, to make it more similar to the S'mores of our childhood - but they are also delicious with a dark chocolate, if you want a more adult version.