A frugal baker can also be an adventurous baker, in the sense that leftover ingredients from one recipe can be used as an excuse to try something new. I still had a bunch of marshmallows from the fudgy frosting I made for these decadent peanut butter brownies that use approximately one tanker truck full of sugar (they tasted spectacular; I will go to the hospital if I eat one more before at least 18 months have passed). I can use marshmallows in hot chocolate, but it is 75 degrees right now, so instead I thought of the one other use I know for marshmallows. I did a search for "smores brownies" and hit this extremely basic and simple recipe, which I thought would occupy my mind without providing any extra stress on Tuesday night.
Basically, all you're doing in this recipe is baking brownies from a mix and putting a bunch of s'mores toppings on it midway through. I'd actually never in my life used a pre-packaged mix before, but I appreciated the shortcut on this occasion. I baked it for 15 minutes, took it out of the oven, and added a very appealing collage of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker.
In an effort to avoid waste, I tried to make my own impromptu s'mores by spreading the leftover batter on graham cracker with the handful of marshmallows I had remaining. I would call this idea "well-intentioned."
After 10 more minutes, I removed the pan from the oven. I swear this is not the same picture as the one above.
After waiting a while—a long while—I started to cut and realized my problem. By loading up the toppings, I essentially halted the baking process in its tracks. The brownies were no more "done" after 10 more minutes of sitting in the oven, because they were suffocating under loose sweets. Taking a knife to the "finished" product produced a goopy mess.
By this point in the night, I was feeling very discouraged, because of my brownies. I tried to salvage them, however, by putting the pan in the fridge for a night. This morning, I woke up to a little treat: My brownies had congealed significantly. If they were still lacking a kind of professional solidity, they nevertheless were able to be eaten without a gigantic mess. They were very chocolate-forward, a little crunchy, and gave me a sugar buzz at 9:45 a.m.
That is how my brownies turned out.
