Decadent Smores Brownies

Smores have sure come a long way since brownie camp! Tons of new recipes are popping up all over the place with delicious variations on the marshmallow-chocolate-and graham cracker theme. Take these decadent Smores Brownies, for instance! I'm sure you just need to look at the picture once and already you're gonna want smore!

Smores bring back a lot of fun memories for me, like being at the cottage in the summer time, having a bonfire down on the beach, slapping away mosquitoes, and roasting marshmallows. My mom would always make sure we had chocolate and graham crackers, and peanut butter too. We'd roast � or more often than not � BURN � the marshmallows then squish them between two crackers spread with chocolate and peanut butter. The chocolate would melt instantly and OMG! Smores are truly dangerous. Once you start eating them, it's really impossible to stop. But if you thought campfire smores were good, then Mary Ann's recipe for the decadent brownie smores over at the Beach House Kitchen blog will blow your socks off completely. She takes smores to the next level, for sure! Imagine, all these layers of your most favourite things, all rolled in to one bite-sized bliss bar.

Mary Ann's the daughter and granddaughter of some very amazing cooks, and she picked up the gift herself at a very young age. She started the Beach House Kitchen blog thanks to the encouragement of her friend Rose - people just love her cooking so much, it would be a crime not to share. With her two sons away at college, and being an empty nester, she had no excuse. Why did she call it the Beach House Kitchen? Because she grew up spending her summers at her beloved Jersey Shore, and her best earliest memories are of yummy meals on special summer occasions. She herself now entertains at her own beach house between May and Labour Day every year, and loves every moment of it. If we can't be lucky enough to be a guest at one of her special dinners, at least we can benefit from her brilliant blog, which features all of her best recipes � some of her own, and others she has collected from other wonderful cooks over the years � including this delicious one she was going to bake for her son Casey when he came home for spring break!

Did you know that marshmallow flavored sweets have been around since Egyptian times? Yes, the use of the marshmallow plant to make sweets dates all the way back to ancient Egypt, where the recipe called for extracting sap from the plant and mixing it with nuts and honey. Another pre modern recipe uses the pith of the marshmallow plant, instead of the sap. The stem was peeled back to reveal the soft and spongy pith, which was boiled in sugar syrup and dried to produce a soft, chewy confection. The marshmallow plant's sap was also used by gladiators in ancient Rome. The sap was rubbed on the body in preparation for the fight. It's no wonder it has remained a popular a popular treat right up until today.