I love baking & decorating (& let’s face it – eating) cakes.

A few weeks ago I got the itch to bake a cake – but I needed an occasion to do so. There’s no way I was going to have a whole cake sitting around my house for me to eat all of. Not when I’ve been doing more or less OK at this whole trying to be healthy thing & have actually dropped a few lbs.

Finally I had an occasion. My husband & I threw our first backyard barbecue of 2016 a few weekends ago. While other places were just starting to defrost – or worse, getting even MORE snow! – the Sunshine State lived up to its name in February.

I was trying to think of what kind of cake to make when it hit me: s’mores!

There are times where I am all about making complex  recipes from scratch, and then there are times I take more of a “Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee” type of approach. This is the latter.

I’m all about doctoring up a boxed cake mix to get it to taste more homemade. So this cake recipe was made with a box of chocolate cake mix. I added a splash of milk to the batter as a little something extra – it gives it just a little more personality!

Besides the chocolate cake itself, what really gives this s’mores cake some ‘oomph’ is the Hershey’s chocolate frosting & Biscoff cookie butter.

That’s right, cookie butter! I finally had an excuse to buy some – I loveeeee Biscoff cookies!

I know it’s not the same thing as graham crackers – but trust me on this one. It’s got that yummy cookie flavor & goes oh so well with the chocolate and marshmallow! So this cake has cookie butter in the center & piped around the bottom.

On top there’s crushed graham crackers, Hershey’s chocolate pieces, & mini marshmallows.

Full disclosure: I don’t have one of those fancy kitchen torches, so I used a lighter to toast these little marshmallows!

The mini marshmallows alone don’t give this cake enough of a s’mores feel. I recommend serving it with a dollop of marshmallow fluff (not pictured – the cake, once served, went pretty quickly!)

I’m so blessed to have family & friends to share cakes like this with – so I don’t eat the whole thing!