Transform Store-Bought Cake Mix Into A Whole New Dessert With Just 3 Ingredients

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If you're counting down the days until summer vacation, ready to jump in the pool or sip a refreshing summer cocktail on a sun-soaked day, listen up: This might just be the dessert of the summer, and even the least baking-savvy person in the world could probably master it. Sweet, buttery, and utterly addictive, this recipe takes only a box of store-bought cake mix, 1 cup of butter, and two cans of the fruit of your choice and magically transforms it into the most delicious cobbler of your life.

The cobbler is sometimes referred to as a "dump cake," and it's called that for a reason. Without much in the way of a real recipe, it essentially involves dumping a can of fruit and a whole box of white cake mix into a large casserole dish, then adding melted butter across the top. When the cake is baked, the juice from the fruit and the fat from the melted butter turn the cake mix into a flaky, golden, melt-in-your-mouth crumble topping that blends perfectly with the warm, cooked fruit.

One of the main draws of this dessert is how easy it is to make — but if you're looking to challenge yourself, there are a couple of things you can do to mix it up. The first, of course, is to switch out the canned fruit for fresh. Mixing fresh fruit with sugar and a little bit of lemon juice before putting them in your dump cake, a process known as maceration, will draw moisture and flavor out of your fruit and create a sugary syrup that will seep into the cake mix as it bakes.

Next, try using different kinds of fruit (whether fresh or canned). If you're a frequenter of a local farmers market, strawberries are in season until July, while blackberry season can extend all the way into early fall. While most people may first think of a berry cobbler, non-berry fruits, like apples, peaches, or nectarines, can also work. Another easy tweak is using half melted butter and half room-temperature butter. With this method, you would place nobs of sliced butter on top of the melted to produce delicious pockets of buttery goodness after baking.

The next logical step to elevate your dish? Pair it with ice cream. The best store bought vanilla ice cream is always going to be a reliable winner, but if you want to go for something a little different, fruity flavors, caramel swirl, or floral flavors, like rose or lavender, are all fun twists that let you pull together a dinner party-worthy dessert with minimal effort. And while you're at the store, you might want to pick up a few boxes of cake mix — you'll find that this dessert has a tendency to vanish rather quickly.