Little Ivy Cakes

LAVENDER Lemon S'MORES!

BUT FIRST...
I really want you to meet our new puppy, Buddy...
 
Isn't he just so cute! He's a big love-bug and we adore him. Although, he has chewed up two pair of my flips flops, one pair of my sisters, a lens cap, and some other things, hopefully the list won't get too long. He's a good boy though. :)

Anyway, back to the s'mores...:)

It's been fun to have a friend that lives close by and loves lavender because I have had a chance to experiment and make lavender goodies for her to come over and try. The next thing I want to try is a lavender grill-rub and then maybe I'll give it a rest for a while.

Besides, my lavender buddy, Amy, is moving away! I know! Sad! To New York city, ya, she's moving to New York city! :( !
This past weekend we had a going away bonfire party at the beach for her and I wanted to make her lavender s'mores. So I made lavender lemon marshmallows and graham crackers and had another friend, Gillian, make homemade vegan dark chocolate. She made a pomegranate flavor and a blueberry flavor and they were really super amazing! But, if you're not a dark chocolate person, they may have been a bit too bitter for you. I think it was like 90% cocoa, so, strong, but very good and it balanced out the s'more beautifully. *In my pictures I used a store-bought chocolate with raspberry bits and it was good in the s'more as well.

So, for the marshmallows and crackers I basically just modified the graham cracker and marshmallow recipes I found from Smitten Kitchen - A blog you must check out if you haven't already. It's super profesh with gorgeous pictures. Oh and she's in NY city, that's funny.

For the Marshmallows, I blended about 2 teaspoons lavender and 2 tablespoons lemon zest with the 2 cups granulated sugar and then cooked the sugar as directed etc.. etc...I also added a little Wilton's violet gel food coloring to give them a hint of lavender color (I should have added a little more though) oh well.

The marshmallows took about an hour to whip up and then you have to let them set in the fridge for at least 4 hours but, I let mine chill overnight. At first I was quite worried the sugary goop would not gel, but it did and they were a lot of fun to play with. I am definitely going to try making a few different flavors in the future. One thing I found was that after I cut them, tossed them in powdered sugar, and stored them at room temp (which the recipes says to do), there was a bit of condensation and they lost their powdery-ness the next day. Luckily it only happened to the left over ones I didn't take to the bonfire.

Then, for the Graham Crackers I did pretty much the same thing but blended zest of a whole large lemon and 2 teaspoons lavender with the dark brown sugar needed in the recipe. And I omitted cinnamon from the original recipe.
For the sugar sprinkles I blended 1 tsp lavender and a 1/2 cup natural cane sugar to coat the top of the cookies before baking. I used the skinny round end of a chopstick to mark the dots on the cookies before baking which adds such a cute touch.

I found that using a cookie cutter is much easier too rather than trying to cut straight/pretty/uniform cookies with a knife. I also found that even though the graham crackers were really good, I probably won't make them again. Cut-out style cookies are a little bit of a pain so it just wouldn't be worth it again.

Anyway, the beach-fire party was fun and the s'mores were deeee-licious!

 THE END!

Smores Bars