S’mores cookies are the best part of camping all year round
The best part about camping is getting to make S’mores around the campire, but since it’s not always camping season, these S’mores cookies, loaded with marshmallows, chopped up graham crackers and dark chocolate chunks capture the spirit of chasing away mosquitoes under open starry skies any time of the year.
Once I cracked the code on my high-altitude chocolate chip cookies, these cookies have been on my mind. I love that you get all the flavors of a S’more with less of the mess.
These are craggy chocolatey cookies with toasted graham cracker flavor and pull apart marshmallow goodness. And because we’re using the secret trick of adding dehydrated marshmallows to the dough, you’re guaranteed marshmallows that both melt without disappearing into the cookie and wrecking the structure of the cookie.
Why you’ll love these S’mores cookies
- Campfire flavor year round: No need to bust out the fire pit; you can make these cookies in your kitchen any time.
- You actually can see the marshmallows: Dehydrated marshmallows melt down more slowly, leaving you with bright white pools of melted awesome marshmallow instead of over-melted fresh marshmallows that expand too quickly and then collapse your cookie’s structure.
- Really fun to make: All my mix-in heavy cookies and bars like Monster Cookies, Kitchen Sink Blondies and Twix cookies are oddly satisfying to make. Loading these cookies up with all the fun stuff and decorating the tops never gets old.
- No chilling needed: the high proportion of mix-ins in these cookies means you can scoop and go straight into the oven after mixing up a batch.
- Textural awesomeness: the combo of crunchy graham cracker + gooey marshmallow + balancing richness of dark chocolate is so very good. It’s everything you love about a campfire Smore in easier to get form.
What are S’mores cookies?
- Campfire classic in cookie form: the traditional S’mores sandwich consisting of 2 graham cracker sheets and milk chocolate stuck together with a marshmallow toasted over a fire gets put into a cookie form by adding to a chocolate chip cookies recipe.
- Chocolate chip cookies + extra mix-ins: we’re adding extra mix-ins to the classic chocolate chip cookie in the way of chopped up graham crackers and marshmallows and using dark chocolate in place of chocolate chips to cut back on what can be too much sweetness in a traditional s’more.
Ingredients for Smores cookies
Cookie dough
- All-purpose flour
- Arrowroot starch (or cornstarch)
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Packaged graham crackers
- Mini marshmallows: let sit out at room temperature overnight to partially dehydrate or in the oven following directions in my dehydrated marshmallows recipe.
- Milk chocolate or chocolate chips
- Butter
- Brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Heavy cream
- Vanilla extract
Equipment needed
- Cookie scoop: a 2 oz scoop like a Vollrath yellow scoop is perfect.
- Sheet trays
- Parchment
The problem with marshmallows in cookie recipes
Marshmallows can cause so many issues when you add them to cookies that I wrote an entire article on it called “9 reasons your marshmallow cookies turned into a sticky mess” if you’re looking for a deep dive on the summary below.
Melting problems
- Heat sensitivity: This is a weird thing, but something I’ve discovered with my Marshmallow crispy cookies is that marshmallows are quite sensitive to heat. If you put in fresh marshmallows into a cookie dough, they will melt faster than it takes for the whole cookie to bake. This can lead to:
- Translucent pools of goo: there may be little evidence of having marshmallows in your recipe at all if they melt completely.
- Holes in your cookies: One cookie in my first batch of these S’mores cookies looked like a perfect donut when the large marshmallow in the middle melted completely.
Why dehydrated marshmallows work better in cookies
Dry marshmallows take longer to melt: partially dry marshmallows develop a skin on the outside. This skin takes longer to melt in the oven. This in turn lets the cookie bake fully as the marshmallow is finishing melting. This leads to:
- Bright white pools of marshmallow on the finished cookie: much prettier!
- Cookies that hold their structure much better: from the two pictures below, the cookies on the left (with dehydrated marshmallows) are chunky beautifully craggy cookies that hold their shape. The cookies on the right with fresh frozen marshmallows in contrast are overly flat with marshmallows melted so completely they’ve mostly disappeared.
How to dehydrate marshmallows for the best cookies
In all cases, you do not want the marshmallows to be crispy. You should be able to feel a soft center in the marshmallows. Partially dehydrated marshmallows should feel stale not like a fully baked meringue cookie which you can shatter in your hand if you squeeze it.
- Sheet tray: place marshmallows on a sheet tray and let them sit at room temperature at least overnight and up to 24 hours.
- Oven: Heat your oven to the lowest temp possible (170 F) on many home ovens. Place the marshmallows on a silicone baking mat inside a sheet tray. Bake the marshmallows for 3 hours.
- Dehydrator: Set marshmallows on dehydrator racks and bake at 135 F for 3-4 hours.
After much testing, I can’t recommend using fresh marshmallows as a mix-in in cookies. Fresh marshmallows, even if frozen completely before adding them to a cookie have far too much water in them. When that water expands rapidly in the oven, the steam breaks apart the cookie matrix, leaving a collapsed structure that falls apart easily. Worse, the marshmallows too often melt before the structure is set, leaving no trace of marshmallows in the cookie at all. If you’re having a s’mores cookie, you should SEE marshmallows! It is possible to add marshmallows (or marshmallow cream) on top of your cookie towards the end of baking, but I’ve found that doing so is a tedious (or messy in the case of marshmallow cream) process. Additionally, you have to get the timing just right or you risk burning marshmallows, having them be not warm enough to adhere to the top of the cookie, or overbaking your cookies. With dehydrated marshmallows, there is no guesswork.
How to make S’mores cookies
- Dehydrate a bag of marshmallows: It’s easiest to do this ahead of time. Dehydrated marshmallows keep as long as any fresh bag would. A casual day when you’re doing other things in the kitchen, set up a batch of marshmallows drying per the instructions in my dehydrated marshmallows recipe.
- Mix the wet ingredients: Melt the butter until you see brown flecks. Place the brown butter in the freezer for 20 minutes. Mix the partially chilled butter with brown sugar and sugar until it forms a paste. Add in the eggs and vanilla, beating until smooth.
- Add the mix-ins and flour: Chop the graham crackers into 1/2″ squares, and chop the chocolate into rough large chunks. Set aside about 1/2 cup each of the chocolate and the graham crackers for the tops of the cookies. Mix the starch, baking soda, and salt with the flour. Add in the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate chunks to the flour. Add the dry ingredients and mix-ins to the butter mix, beating just until all the flour disappears.
- Make dough balls: Use a cookie scoop to portion out the dough. Place the cookies on parchment lined sheet trays. Place a couple pieces of the reserved graham crackers and a piece of chocolate on each cookie.
- Bake the cookies: Bake the cookies for 12 minutes at 350 F (180 C), rotating the sheets halfway through baking.
- Cool: Let the cookies cool for about 5 minutes on the sheet pans before moving them to cool completely on a wire rack.
Secrets to perfect S’mores cookies every time
Don’t skip topping the cookies
Adding the extra graham cracker pieces on top of each cookie really gives these cookies their bakery-worthy look. Plus, the graham crackers get a toasty flavor from the oven, which adds yet another layer of flavor you won’t get from the crackers inside the cookie. Best yet, the chocolate on the top melts into a proper puddle of luscious melty loveliness, something that is hard to achieve in a real s’more.
How to keep the cookies soft
Don’t overbake these cookies. 12 minutes at 350 is more than enough. As the cookies cool on their baking sheet, you’ll have some carry-over heat that will firm up the insides without overbaking them.
Storing S’mores cookies
These cookies can be frozen easily for up to 2 months in ziploc bags with as much air removed as possible. Store them at room temperature in a lidded container like my favorite Rubbermaid Take-Alongs (the 1 gallon size) and they’ll stay soft for 3-4 days.
More marshmallow cookies
S’mores cookies
- Total Time: about 1 hour
- Yield: 24 1x
Description
Loaded with cut up graham crackers, big chunks of chocolate and dehydrated mini marshmallows, these cookies have all the charm of the fireside treats but you can make them any time of year.
Ingredients
- 12 Tablespoons butter (170 g)
- 2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (325 g)
- 1 Tablespoon arrowroot starch
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
- 1 ½ sleeves of wrapped graham cracker packages (about 200 g)
- 6 ounces milk chocolate bars
- 2 ½ cups dehydrated miniature marshmallows (see note)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar (160 g)
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar (100 g)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 Tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 F). Line 2 or 3 (if you have 3) baking sheets with parchment paper.
Make the dough
- Brown the butter: Melt the butter over medium low heat in a skillet until the foaming subsides and you see brown flecks in the butter. It will smell nutty.
Chill the brown butter in the freezer for 20 minutes. - Prep the graham crackers and chocolate: Chop the graham crackers into 1/2” squares and the chocolate into large chunks. Set aside 1/2 cup of each of these for topping the cookies.
- Mix the dry ingredients: Whisk the flour with the arrowroot starch, baking soda, and salt. Dump in larger part of the chocolate, graham cracker pieces, plus all the marshmallows. Stir to distribute the mix-ins through the flour.
- Mix the sugars: Mix the sugars with the cold-ish brown butter (some will still be liquid, and that’s just fine) just until it turns into a sandy paste. You don’t want to incorporate too much air, or the cookies could collapse in the oven.
- Add in the liquid ingredients: Add the eggs, cream, and vanilla to the sugar. Mix just until everything is smooth.
- Add in the flour/chocolate: Mix in the flour mixture, just until the flour disappears.
- Portion out the dough: Portion out 2 ounce balls of dough (I use my Vollrath yellow scoop ).
Chill the brown butter in the freezer for 20 minutes.
Bake the cookies
- Place 6 cookie dough balls on each of the cookie sheets. Press in a piece of the reserved chocolate and a couple pieces of the leftover graham cracker pieces.
- Bake: You can bake 2 cookie sheets at a time with this recipe. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, rotating the sheets back to front and top to bottom halfway through baking.
- Cool: cool the cookies on the tray they baked on. Cookies are best when they are warm, but you can store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. You can also freeze the cookies for about 2 months.
Notes
Dehydrated marshmallows are key to this recipe: You can buy dehydrated marshmallows, but they are far too expensive. One recipe of my dehydrated marshmallows recipe will give you enough marshmallows to make at least 2 batches of these cookies for about 60 cents a batch.
Chocolate snobbery: Of course you can use chocolate chips in place of chocolate bars in this recipe, but if you do use chocolate bars, you’ll notice that you’ll get lovely pools of melted chocolate. Chocolate chips hold their shape, so they won’t make those liquidy chocolate pools. It’s an aesthetic choice, but I dare you to try the chocolate bars once and see if you like them!
Large marshmallows: You can use dehydrated large marshmallows as well. To do so, you’ll want to make up the dough without the marshmallows. Scoop out a portion of dough in your hands and flatten the dough into a thin circle. Place a dehydrated large marshmallow in the center of the dough and wrap the dough around the marshmallow. Seal it well and then bake as normal. Big marshmallows will get you more epic marshmallow pulls! 
Spring Smores cookies for Easter: Swap out the graham crackers for Bunny Grahams crackers. The Neapolitan flavors make the nicest look for Easter, but they’re all pretty cute. There’s no need to chop these crackers in your cookies! 
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- + cooling time:
- Cook Time: 24 minutes
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
