Greens Smoothie (haha not!) and S'mores Cake

So, in my imaginary life where I'm perfect, I wake up at 6 every morning without even considering pressing snooze, and then have devotions, make cinnamon rolls, and go for a run.  In reality, I set my cell phone alarms for 6:03, 6:19, and 6:32.  I also have a regular alarm set for 6:30.  At 6:03, my cell phone alarm goes off, I press snooze, and hear nothing more from it for the rest of the morning.  6:30 rolls around, and the other alarm goes off.  Okay, so one thing you've gotta know...  I share a room with my awesome little sister, and we share a full-sized bed.  One side is kinda slanted, and I can't get to sleep on that side.  That's the side next to the alarm clock.  So my little sister sleeps next to my alarm clock, and in the morning when it goes off, I poke her and she groans and presses snooze.  Because I have no concept of the time because I can't read her alarm, which is across the room, because I'm not wearing my glasses in the morning, and can't read my alarm because it's blindingly bright and is therefore turned to the side so we can get to sleep, I continue to poke my snoozer over and over again, until I wake up enough to realize that it's 8 o' clock and I'm totally not going to get downstairs in time to make a pot of coffee for my mom and me before she makes instant coffee for herself.  Sometimes when I do make it downstairs in time, I still don't make coffee, especially lately, because I'm lazy and not addicted to caffeine.  Actually, my mom can only drink decaf, even in the morning, so caffeine is irrelevant

 Annnyhow.... where was I going with this?  Oh yeah!!!  So this morning I woke up and decided to make my favorite smoothie.  Well first of all, we were out of the kind of juice I like to thin it out with, but I just used a different kind of juice because I'm totally flexible like that.  So I made the smoothie, and then since I like it so much, I decided to take some pictures of it and post it.

Well, I'm not posting it, because let me just say that the pictures were ridiculously tragically ugly and I deleted them all with the knowledge that not even an awesome collage could save these buggers.

Moving on....

Despite the first failure of the day, I had a chance to save face with a birthday/anniversary cake I was planning to make for after church.  After choosing between 8 or so chocolate cake recipes, I was distressed to find that we didn't have enough sour cream for the one I'd chosen.  After choosing between 4 or so more chocolate cake recipes that we actually had the ingredients for, I had the brilliant idea to make a s'mores cake.  Plus I also had the brilliant idea to make some fun substitutions and additions.  Y'know, to make it healthier, and more s'moreslike.  Because those are totally not contradictory.  The cakes smelled great in the oven!

[I interrupt this to warn you that when I said that I wouldn't post recipes I didn't like, I underestimated the need to post pictures that I'd taken before tasting the recipe.]

[I interrupt this again to warn you that if you're anticipating a disaster, the actual outcome will be super anticlimactic, as you can probably tell from the pictures.]

I finished assembling the cake through a series of wing-its.  It was pretty good looking, so I took some pictures of it.  It was awesome.  I got some pieces of firewood and a stick with stovetop-toasted marshmallows on it to go with the whole s'mores theme, y'know, and then I used a chocolate bar and some more marshmallows for props, arranging them directly on an ugly paint/blueberry stained green tablecloth whose ugliness was partly responsible for the morning's failure.  After taking a bunch of pictures, I decided that the whole setup might look better directly on the porch, so I moved the cake and all the props except for the tablecloth to the porch and took a bunch more pictures.

It was pretty hot out so by the time I finished taking pictures, the chocolate bar was getting pretty soft.  I kinda felt bad about it and didn't want to throw it away, but I didn't really feel like eating it myself.  It didn't have too much dirt on it or anything...  I mean, I'd eat it if I were so inclined to eat a chocolate bar at that point.  But I wasn't, so went into the living room where my sister D was chillin' in the corner on her laptop wearing headphones...

"Wanna nice melty chocolate bar?"  I hollered to be heard over whatever she was listening to, while holding the poor melty thing out to her.

She took it absentmindedly, and I'm assuming ate it, none the wiser.

My ability to strengthen others' immune systems in delicious ways without them knowing it is just awesome.

Actually she may still have eaten it even if she knew where it had been.

Maybe.

Anyhow, the cake.  After church, we ate it.  It wasn't horrible.  At first I just took a few bites of someone else's piece, and honestly, I thought it was a little dry and boring.  Of course, it didn't help that it didn't have any icing.  Or ice-cream...  But actually, later I grabbed some more and ate it with my hands, just shoving it into my mouth, y'know, and it tasted way better that way.  Like, kinda wholesome and chocolatey and stuff.  So, if you're going to eat this, don't use a fork or proper etiquette.

[For the record, I just thought of the appropriate food blogger term for this cake.  It's a snack cake!]

I adapted the cake recipe from here.  All I did differently was substituted 3/4 c of a mix of graham flour and whole wheat flour for 3/4 c of the all-purpose flour, substituted 1/4 c brown sugar for white, and threw in like, 4 crushed graham crackers and maybe 1/2 c mini chocolate chips.  Oh, and I baked them in two 9-inch pans, not a 9x13.  I wasn't super impressed with the cake, so you could use a different chocolate cake recipe.  Or you could try this one without my substitutions.  Or you could make it the way I did, because a good 50% of the people thought it was perfect the way it was.

For the filling, I put like, 8 marshmallows, some chocolate chips, and a little milk in a bowl and nuked them until they were about to overflow.  Then I stirred all that up and added like, 8 more marshmallows and nuked that until it was about to overflow, and stirred that until it was all smooth.  Then I crushed 2 graham crackers into that.  I sprinkled the first layer with mini chocolate chips and then put on the filling.

For the topping, I stuck the top layer on a pizza pan, sprinkled it with chocolate chips, cut marshmallows in half until they filled the top, and broiled it on low until they were all roasted looking.  Then I sprinkled that with more chocolate chips and 2 more graham crackers, and drizzled it with some chocolate syrup.  Whew!

If you make this, keep in mind that you have as much right to wing it as I do, so if you don't have something on hand or have an idea to make it better, just, well, wing it!

Here's my Printable Recipe Card.