Most of the time, inspiration comes moderately: an idea for a fall recipe when I’m watching Leo run through the sprinkler, a take on an Easter dish when I’m shopping for Valentine’s Day cards, a twist on a family favorite when I’m meal planning for the week. I try to plan ahead, spend plenty of time thinking about seasonal tastes, making lists upon lists of recipes I can’t wait to make. But then, sometimes inspiration strikes furiously. It overtakes me, consumes my day, quietly reshuffles my daily priorities in an instance. My paleo American flag pie is a good example: I’d met my mom and Leo downtown to visit with Leo’s great-grandma, then we met O for lunch at a pizza shop by the courthouse. It was, what, May?, with Memorial Day on the horizon. It hit me. “Paleo. American. Flag. PIE.” “What?” they responded at intervals, looking at me half-quizzically, half-knowing-me-well-enough.
I researched base recipes over my chopped salad, adding strawberries and blueberries and extra tapioca starch and lemons and maybe some wine just in case to my grocery list. I had a packed afternoon, but I cleared it all, headed straight for the grocery store, and spent the rest of the day elbow-deep in paleo pie crusts. Snapping my paleo blogger friends a shot of my late-night grocery store haul, dashing to the store after Leo’d gone to bed, buying more strawberries and blueberries and tapioca starch and lemons and definitely wine. It’s always these fast-and-furious recipes that don’t work the first time around; they induce a wild ride of emotions, always starting with excitement, followed by disappointment, some self-doubt, a brief existential crisis, a quick search of “real jobs” on LinkedIn (“I am the worst food blogger of all time,” “I’ll never be an actress, never!”), and then a picking up of the pieces, refilling my pantry, and finally the high of glory, of a crunchy yet tender pie crust, a firm but fruity filling, a gorgeous flag topping.
In this case, I’d be inspired by the classic summer flavor trio: graham cracker, melty chocolate, and crispy, charred marshmallow. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a smores fanatic, yet I rarely reach for the standard treat. Of course, we don’t eat much refined sugar at home at all, but we do break our rules when it means roasted marshmallows over a Sterno with Leo at our weekend dinner out. No, usually I opt for funky flavor substitutions, from blackberry white chocolate smores (THE. BEST. EVER.) to raspberry matcha smores to dark chocolate cherry smores. I’m pretty sure these ugly but insanely delicious peanut butter chocolate marshmallow pies even count, too. But, since we avoid refined sugar at home, I wanted to make a paleo smores bars recipe that we could enjoy all summer long. The idea hit me this week and instantly overtook the cranberry and rosemary and pumpkin recipes I had slated to test. The recipe started out overly complicated, with lots of resting and stirring and gratuitous mixing bowls. The paleo smores bars themselves, though? So good. So I kept testing, simplifying the ingredients and the process, making it a much more streamlined process that delivers paleo smores bars to your face more quickly and more easily. And isn’t that the goal of paleo smores bars? Get that graham cracker crust, the rich chocolate center, the burnt and gooey marshmallow where they belong, ay-sap.
The marshmallow layer is derived from my paleo marshmallow recipe that I turned into paleo peeps this Easter, using only a few simple, but far more nutritious ingredients than the standard fluffy cubes. Don’t be intimidated by homemade marshmallows! This recipe especially is extremely simple; the hardest part is letting them dry for a few hours. The process is simple: simmer a simple honey mixture then combine it with some gelatin. Pour the whole thing into a stand mixer and mix for a few minutes. Scrape into a pan and wait – tada! Make sure you start the marshmallow layer ahead; they need at least 4 hours to dry. And one thing to keep in mind is that these marshmallows will not stay as firm as traditional marshmallows, so they require a bit of chilling/resting time to firm back up after going under the broiler. To make these paleo smores bars, I used…
