S’mores are one of my all-time favorite desserts. In fact, marshmallow, chocolate and graham in any style of dessert wins my heart. I love the texture combination: sticky, gooey mallow // creamy, milk chocolate // crunchy, spiced graham cracker. I’m working with The Hershey Company today to bring you my new favorite s’mores recipe.
We all know that desserts are only as good as the ingredients that make them. While store-bought graham crackers are good, I wanted to create something a little more homemade for the ultimate s’mores. Thus, these Pumpkin Spice Homemade Graham Crackers were born.
To make them extra fun, I used a pumpkin shaped cookie cutter as shown by my little helper.
Two things make these graham crackers pumpkin spiced: pumpkin pie spice (obviously) and pumpkin BEER! While the beer isn’t that detectable in the end product, I think it adds a festive punch. You can just use water if you prefer!
To get started, gather your ingredients and mix the dry together in the bowl of a food processor.
I used mostly whole wheat pastry flour to amp up the nutrition a bit.
Next add your butter – chilled and cubed – and process until you have butter spread throughout your mixture and it becomes a sandy consistency.
Lastly, add your wet ingredients – the beer and honey – and process until a dough forms, about 30 seconds.
At this point, plop your dough out and form it into a mound. Roll it out until it’s about 1/4 of an inch thick.
Then start cutting out your pumpkins. Or you can just cut squares…. or any shape you like.
Combine the scraps left from cutting (this is where squares would yield efficiency!) and re-roll for a second (and third) round of pumpkin cutting.
I got about 20 pumpkins. See those two extra dough balls? They tasted amazing right out of the oven!!
Poke some holes in for graham cracker loyalty!
And bake at 350*. The graham pumpkins will be done in about 20 minutes, depending on how thick you cut them. Check them at 15 and you might need as long as 22-25 minutes until the centers are set.
At this point, you can take them out of the oven and let cool. But if you want them to be REALLY crunchy, then do this next step: Turn off your oven. Transfer pumpkins to a cooling rack, and let them cool in the still-warm oven for an hour. The heat will continue to bake off moisture leaving you with a crunchy cracker.
Ready for s’mores!!
Pumpkin Spice Graham Crackers
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1.5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 stick salted butter 1/2 cup
- 1/4 cup pumpkin beer or water
- 1/4 cup honey
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350*
- Combine flours, pumpkin pie spice, brown sugar, salt and baking soda in a food processor and whirl to combine.
- Cube butter into 1/4 inch pieces and pulse it in until you have bullets of butter throughout.
- Add beer and honey and process until it forms a dough.
- Plop the dough onto your counter and roll out so it's about 1/4" thick.
- Cut the dough into pumpkins or squares.
- Combine any remaining dough in another ball and roll out. Repeat cutting until dough is gone. Eat any remaining dough 😉
- Poke several holes in the crackers with a fork.
- Place parchment on baking pan and pumpkins on top.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, depending on thickness. Look for the center to be set.
- Transfer pumpkins to a cooling rack and place back in warm oven - with heat turned OFF - for an hour.
Obviously these are good by themselves, but s’mores were my main objective! We attended a bonfire recently, so I made these to bring along. Of course I brought Hershey’s chocolate and marshmallows too!
I am a lover of dark chocolate, but for s’mores I love the classic Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar. The ingredients are simple, and it melts beautifully in front of a fire. Recall from my trip to Hershey that the milk they use comes from local farms within 100 miles of Hershey, PA and they are the last chocolate company in the US to use real fluid milk in their chocolate. Three pieces will do ya – two for the s’mores and one for eating on the side.
The pumpkin s’mores were a huge hit!! I had several friends tell me it was the best s’mores they’d ever had.
How do you like your s’mores? Charred marshmallow? Perfectly brown?
Disclosure: This blog post was sponsored by The Hershey Company as part of my participation in their Food Ambassador program. All thoughts and opinions about delicious s’mores and chocolate are my own.
You cracked me up this morning….”poke some hole for graham cracker loyalty” Too funny!
I love the idea of pumpkin graham crackers! Docking adds authenticity and serves a purpose.
Do you ever make homemade marshmallows? They’re so deliciously easy, and they make amazing s’mores. I use Martha Stewart’s recipe:
http://www.marthastewart.com/333974/homemade-marshmallows
For s’mores for a crowd in the winter, I make the graham crackers and then cut the marshmallows a bit smaller. I spread a dozen crakers with Nutella, then I set out another dozen crackers on a half-sheet pan, add the marshmallows, and broil them until toasted. Top with the Nutella crackers. They’re messy, but totally worth it!
Sounds amazing!
Hersheys cookies and cream is by far their best chocolate ever! Ima try making snore with that just to bring it to the next level.
Wow these look amazing!!
I love the tip to let them cool in the turned-off oven. I’m going to try that next time I make crackers! The best smores are with perfectly browned marshmallows! 🙂 I love this fall twist on the classic treat.
Those pumpkin spice graham crackers look soooo good! I bet they taste delicious when used to make a s’more!! Your recipe got me thinking…I bet gingersnaps would make a delicious Christmastime s’more!
These look delicious! The last time we made s’mores (this summer), we used chocolate coated cookies, and the chocolate melted beautifully. I think the pumpkin spice cookie is a wonderful fall touch, though.
Good call on docking the cookies! I bet that helped them stay nice and flat. Thanks for the recipe!
These are like smores on steroids!! The cookies look amazing on their own, but then paired with marshmallows and chocolate…WOW! I can’t even imagine how good they’d be with the pumpkin spice marshmallows I’ve been seeing at Target!
Yum, these look amazing! I want to try them tonight!!
Seriously turnt up s’mores! Beer in the batter? Now you’ve got my attention. 🙂
Oh, yes! These look amazing! And I love that there aren’t any weird ingredients like regular grahams! Can’t wait to try somtime!
Ooh, these look delicious! I’m thinking if no bonfire was available a bit of hazelnut spread (Hershey or otherwise) would be pretty darn good on them!
S’mores are one of my favorite desserts too! I love the addition of pumpkin spice graham crackers – perfect for fall! Do you have any suggestions on pumpkin beers to use? Something really “pumpkin-pie-flavored/spicy” or something more subtle?
What part of the country are you in? The beer wasnt all that detectable so I think any kind would be fine.
What a cute idea! Love it!
Yum! I live in a condo, so no outdoor bonfires for me. But I am totally gonna try making s’mores in my fireplace!!
I want one of these right now! I never would have thought to make my own graham crackers, but these look too good to pass up, love the twist of pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin shape. I am so excited to make these, thank you.
Yum! Such an awesome idea. I haven’t had a good smore in a long time!
Love the idea of shaped smores. This would be super cute in the winter too with sugar cookies or gingerbread.
Delicious.
That 3rd picture from the last b/4 the recipe is so cool. It looks like the cookie is levitating above the plate. I just had lunch and now I’m wanting s’mores. I think I’ll try them this weekend. Thanks for the recipe.
Lori
So cool! I want one!
YUM! I have been craving s’mores lately and this post just sent my craving over the edge. Is there anything better than homemade grahams? Love that you used beer in the recipe too!
Charred for sure!!! You didn’t tell us how you like yours??
Charred and gooey!!
S’mores are one of my favorite fall treats! There’s so many good memories I have of sitting around the fire roasting marshmallows! When the chocolate meets the marshmallow and makes it melt a little..ahh.. SO good! Pairing it with Pumpkin Spice cookies sounds even more amazing!
Oh this is so great! I just posted a recipe for caramel apple s’mores on my blog on Monday! Will have to try the pumpkin variety next.
Hi Kath, do you happen to know the calorie intake for one of these crackers? They look good!
I don’t, but my Fitness Pal has a really good recipe calculator
Assuming that this recipe makes 20 (as seen above), then it’s about 186 calories per cookie. If you made them in a smore, it’s 626 calories. Thanks for the recipe.
Those look yummy! One question though- how are these graham crackers when they don’t have graham flour? It’s easy to find- Bob’s Red Mill has it in most supermarkets. Without graham flour these are just cookies, though tasty looking cookies! Without leavener or graham flour I would guess they came out pretty hard at that thickness? 1/8″ or replacing with the correct flour might make them more “graham cracker” like in texture.
Awesome idea. Will be making these this weekend. We take graham crackers for a quick snack when we are on the go but I love the idea of homemade ones and you can’t go wrong with pumpkin spiced.
Adding pumpkin to graham crackers is genius! I’m going to have to try and make these gluten-free!
These would be amazing with the seasonal Pumpkin Spice marshmallows I just bought for autumn s’mores! Thank you!!