It’s that time of year – time for s’mores! Camping, fires, even in the backyard, it’s just time to make s’mores. My kids would eat them every night if they could. We were taking our first camping trip of the season last month and being that I always like to overdo things, I thought – I should just make my own marshmallows to bring! Which I did – and they actually turned out amazing (recipe coming soon, it was eaiser than I thought), but um, I forgot them at home. All that work, just to buy them at the store while on the trip.

Anyway, when we got home, I had a giant pan of marshmallows to use up. I cut them up and froze them, and waited for a marshmallow idea to come to me. Around that time, I had just started my little microbakery and was working on new ideas for baked goods to offer. I wanted to do something seasonal, and – lightbulb – I thought S’mores Cookies would be perfect! I used my Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe as a base and went from there!

Here’s how it’s done

Step 1: gather The ingredients

Start by pulling out all of your ingredients. And go to the store to buy marshmallows, ha. (You do not need to home-make marshmallows for these to turn out delicious). And then freeze them. This is key to good S’mores Cookies dotted with chunky marshmallows.

Combine the sugars in one bowl, the butter in another, then the flour, chocolate chunks, graham crackers, frozen marshmallows, and the rest of the dry ingredients in separate bowls. Pull out two eggs and get them to room temperature.

Step 2: Cream the Butter, Sugars and eggs

One crucial step in getting the dough juuust right in this recipe is getting the butter the right texture. I find that taking butter directly from the fridge and softening in the microwave until it just starts to melt makes for the perfect dough base. Take a look at the butter in the image above – your melty softened butter should look like that!

Then, dump the butter into a large mixing bowl and add the sugars. Using either the paddle attachment on your mixer, or a handheld mixer, cream the butter and sugars together until light brown in color and fluffy in texture. Add one room temperature egg and one egg yolk to the mixture, and blend until it’s beginning to hold some shape and look like it’s forming peaks.

(Why this is so beautiful to me, I do not know, but there is something very satisfying about separating an egg yolk from the white and then cupping it in the little shell.)

Step 3: Add dry ingredients

Once you have the butter, sugars, and eggs blended together, add the baking soda, salt, arrowroot powder (or cornstarch), and vanilla. I use vanilla powder, but you can absolutely use vanilla extract. Honestly, I only use vanilla powder because I have it on hand to put in my coffee in the mornings (Try it. So good), and I use it in my Snack Ball recipes.

Next, add the flour in gradually, but don’t over-mix. Once the flour is almost all blended in, add in the graham crackers and chocolate chips and give it a few stirs. Lastly, add mallows, and carefully stir these in. If you over-stir, they will get all melty and start to just become part of the dough. Trust me, it’s super frustrating.

Step 4: chill the dough + shape

Then, cover and refrigerate the dough for at least two hours, and up to overnight. When the dough is thoroughly chilled, heat your oven to 350°F, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Also – I’m not sure why I had been using a “half cookie sheet” for a bazillion years, but I recently invested in a couple of full-size cookie sheets and man – game changer. Oh! And a cookie dough scoop. If you make cookies enough, I highly suggest grabbing one for even sizes and baking. This is what I use and I love it.

If you don’t have one, using a 1/8 cup measuring tool will do the trick to get you the right size. They won’t be perfectly round – that’s okay.

Step 5: Bake the cookies

Finally, bake! Space the dough balls on the baking sheet about 1.5″-2″ apart, and bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown. The centers might still be a bit doughy, but that’s okay.

Step 6: Cool

Leave the cookies on the sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to to a cooling rack to help finish baking. I don’t worry about the shape, but if you do, you can use the “cup trick” – while the cookies are still on the warm baking sheet, turn a cup upside down and swirl the edges of the cookies around to force the edges into a circle. A biscuit cutter will do the same thing.

That’s it! All the yummy flavor of s’mores in a delicious cookie! Melty chocolate, caramel-y marshmallow spilling out the sides, and crunchy graham crackers throughout. Summer camp trip in a cookie.