Have I ever mentioned that summer camp was a huge part of my life throughout my middle school and high school years? I both attended and later worked at camps in Washington State as a camper and then as a counselor. In fact, my first real job was at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Washington as a dishwasher! To this day it was one of the hardest yet most rewarding jobs I have had.
To me camp was an escape from reality; an escape from being bullied in school, an escape from feeling out of place and awkward every day. At camp I was given the acceptance and support to really discover who I was and who I wanted to be. It was working at camp where I met one of the best friends I will ever have and it was camp I turned to when I lost him unexpectedly seven years later. Camp was life, camp was love, camp was the smell of crackling embers, the sound of water lapping against the shore, the sight of hundreds of stars against the pitch black night sky. Camp was…s’mores.
I always adored s’mores and the fact that I got to make them with my campers on our weekly campouts in the woods was something I always looked forward to, as did my campers. The whole lot of us equated s’mores to a complete camping adventure and, even when our camp outs were occasionally rained out, I always made sure to still give the kids that part of their summer camp experience.
It has been years since I slept beneath the stars and even longer since I successfully built and started a campfire on my own. I’m not sure I could flip a canoe these days to save my life and the words to some of the camp songs I once loved are long since gone from my head. What remains are fleeting memories of being blissfully happy and free, memories of the sound of my best friend’s voice and laughter, sounds I will never hear again, and memories of roasting marshmallows around a campfire. Camp may be gone from my daily life but every time I bite into a s’more I’m taken back to a less complicated time and place where I fell asleep to the stars and woke to the sunrise, where I’d surprise myself by discovering tan lines on my cheeks from smiling so much, where I fell in love for the first time, where I grew up.
Today, in honor of the warming weather, in honor of the days getting longer, in honor of it almost being time for summer camp once again, and in honor of my best friend, I’m sharing a piece of myself I don’t normally share along with a recipe for s’more cookies.
One of the glutenous items of food I have unfortunately had to give up is graham crackers. While there are gluten free options, they have a very different consistency and don’t produce quite the same results in s’mores. That is why I opted to use peanut butter in this s’more cookie recipe…it adds an extra layer of flavor and helps me miss the graham cracker element less.
There isn’t much to these ooey gooey beauties. You only need a handful of ingredients, most of which you likely already have, ten minutes for mixing and about an hour total for baking and cooling. They’re a great last minute dessert option for spring and summer barbecues and are guaranteed to be loved by kids and adults alike. Just look at that marshmallow! How could anyone resist?
These do come with a warning: these cookies are hard to resist to a fault. I baked them hoping to take them to our Coachella house this weekend to share them with my girlfriends. There is zero chance there will be so much as one cookie left by Friday. Bake at your own risk!
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 36 cookies | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | Passive Time |
| 35 minutes | 30 minutes |
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These gluten free peanut butter s'more cookies are a modern take on the classic s'more. They are perfect for bbqs, guaranteed to be loved by kids & adults alike!
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- 2 cups peanut butter
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup small marshmallows
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix together sugar, baking powder and baking soda.
- Stir together sugar mixture and peanut butter until the sugar mixture is completely incorporated and absorbed. It takes a few minutes!
- Beat together eggs and vanilla extract in a separate bowl.
- Add egg mix to the peanut butter mix and stir thoroughly.
- Gradually add in chocolate chips and marshmallows and stir until combined.
- Line a baking sheet in parchment paper or foil (important so you don't get marshmallow stuck to your pan!) and spoon balls of cookie dough onto your sheet about two inches apart. Slightly flatten your balls of dough.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes (mine baked for 11 1/2 minutes). Cookies will still be slightly moist when you take them out of the oven but will harden after a few minutes.
- Allow cookies to cool completely before removing from baking sheet.
Try to keep marshmallows on the top of your balls of dough. If the marshmallows bake on the bottom of the cookies it is challenging to get them off the baking sheet without breaking.