Chocolate Strawberry Leibniz S'mores

S'mores are one of those great outdoors requirements and seemingly universal loves.  I don't like them.  For some reason, I spent a lot of my life hiding this fact....do you have any idea what stigma disliking s'mores can cast upon a child? I hid it for a long time.  Sure, I'd accept s'mores but when no one was looking, I'd throw them in the fire.  

As an adult I finally came to accept that it was okay to not like Hershey's milk chocolate or graham crackers.  I would willingly forgo all chocolate before eating milk chocolate.   You can throw Nutella in that category too to understand the pressure I feel with my apparently weird dislikes.  I however, learned to embrace my uniqueness and stood my ground when s'mores pushers tried to get me to cave.  Nope, just ooey, gooey roasted marshmallows for me. 

Recently the bazillion different s'mores ideas on Pinterest alone made me realize that there could be more to s'mores than graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate.  Interesting. 

 I think after a bit of experimenting, I now like s'mores.  Of course anything probably tastes pretty good after a long morning of this...

I really do love snowshoeing, I just forgot how much I disliked walking uphill.  A couple celebrating their 50th anniversary passed me going up the trail.  True enough.  As I gasped for air and cursed altitude, this sweet little couple breezed past me with smiles on their face.  Smiling while hiking uphill at altitude...funny right?  There is a special Colorado type that has evolved to live without requiring oxygen but I am not one them.

The views were all worth it though and there was still a good bit of snow up at 10,000 feet. 

 After all that uphill walking torture, s'mores in front of a roaring fire were actually quite awesome.

When I realized you could mix up the s'more's layers (duh right?), I grabbed my favorite Leibniz cookies.  Have you had these?  The Dark Choco Leibniz are absolutely my favorite cookie in the whole big wide world.  The chocolate is dark without being bitter and paired with the biscuit makes the perfectly not-too-sweet cookie.  Heaven will be full of Choco Leibniz.   The plain Leibniz cookies made a great graham cracker replacement.

See how perfect Choco Leibniz are? I think it's all about the chocolate to cookie ratio.

  They don't even need marshmallows.  

But I did give them a try with marshmallows...I think they need two marshmallows because that's a lot of chocolate.  

Since the chocolate seemed a bit much for s'mores, I  moved on to the plain Leibniz cookies, added just one square of dark chocolate, marshmallows and sliced strawberries.  I'm not sure if it qualifies as a s'more but dark chocolate and strawberries can never be wrong.  And when s'mores pushers come at me next time, I'll feel prepared with my new knowledge that Leibniz make great s'mores.  

I would never throw this s'more in the fire.