Boards are over, it feels like summertime in New York, and I couldn’t be more excited! There are so many fun things coming up for me in the next month – plans to check more things off our NYC bucket list, a trip to Seattle with my co-residents, a bachelorette party in Miami, and one of my best friend’s wedding in Chicago. It’s a busy time of year, but with so much celebration and happiness going on, it’s certainly a welcome change to the harshness of winter. I made these homemade marshmallows and graham crackers a few months ago, but I was waiting for the weather to warm up before sharing the recipe. Because let’s be honest, s’mores are definitely best enjoyed on summer evenings by a fire! Or if you’re me, they’re also pretty good to make for a bachelorette party being hosted in a house with a fire pit!

I made these to be enjoyed at my friend Marissa‘s bachelorette party in Florida a few months ago since I thought s’mores would be a really fun party treat. For Marissa’s engagement I made cookie butter rice krispie rings, so I figured I’d keep the theme going and make my marshmallows cookie butter-flavored also. I took these special s’mores one step further and made the graham crackers from scratch too. And since I’m a crazy person, I made a few disks of semisweet chocolate to match up perfectly with my circular marshmallows and graham crackers. I wanted to do a different shape than the standard square for the marshmallows and crackers because I figured if I was making them from scratch, might as well make them taste AND look special. I just used the same size round cookie cutter for the marshmallows and graham crackers and the chocolate disks were made by pouring melted chocolate into greased muffin tins. The perfectionist in me loved how the sizes all matched!

I’ve made homemade marshmallows once before, and I was excited to try my luck at them once again. They are truly magical to make – what starts out as a small amount of clear mixture turns into mounds of the most amazingly fluffy and pearlescent white marshmallow. Transferring it to a prepared pan and cutting out the shapes can get a bit messy, but I’m used to having most of my kitchen covered in powdered sugar anyway. Last time I made them by spiking the mixture with some Kahlua, but this time around I waited until after the marshmallow mixture was made, then swirled in some melted cookie butter. This way you can really see the cookie butter and it adds a pretty swirl as well. Pretty, or weirdly bumpy, but it’s something about how the marshmallow sets up next to the swirled in cookie butter that made it look a little wrinkly. While I would have loved for them to come out perfectly smooth on top, I LOVED the taste of the cookie butter in these, and let’s face it – they’re destined to become an ooey-gooey mess as a s’more soon enough and at that point no one will notice….

The graham crackers were fun to make – very similar to a roll-out cookie dough, but with the quintessential spice of graham flour and brown sugar. I baked my first batch a few extra minutes so they were a bit crispier than your store-bought cracker, so just keep an eye out on yours if you want a softer bite to them. The taste is really so much better than the store-bought variety – there’s just tons more flavor and they’re pretty being round too :) I had to put in the little indentations so they really looked like graham crackers, and I’m not really sure I can even go back to eating normal s’mores again. Ha ha, just kidding – you’ll never have to twist my arm to eat any variety of s’mores. But if you want to add a smear of cookie butter to your next s’more, even if it’s all store-bought, I’m telling you you won’t be disappointed!