S'mores Cupcakes

I've probably already mentioned the fact that I spend WAY too much time on Pinterest. I never get tired of drooling over pictures of delicious-looking food. All that time on Pinterest usually inspires me to bake which unfortunately inspires me to eat what I bake... hence, S'mores Cupcakes! I generally try to limit my baking sprees to coincide with parties or game nights, times when I know I'll be able to pass off most of the goodies so I have a limited number left at home to eat myself.

Anyway, today's concoction is probably derived from something I saw on Pinterest (or a combination of somethings) but it's more or less something I whipped together on a whim. I started with a box of chocolate cake mix and added a few of my own little touches to create S'mores Cupcakes. I actually made them once a few weeks ago but they needed some tweaking. This time I think they came pretty close to perfect.

To kick things off I made a graham-cracker crust in the bottom of each cupcake liner. All I did was crush up a package of graham crackers then mixed in a tablespoon or two of sugar, a dash of cocoa powder and about a stick of melted butter. After pressing this mixture into the bottom of each cupcake liner I popped them in the oven at 375 for about 10 minutes. Once the graham cracker crusts cooled I poured in the prepared chocolate cake batter and pressed a few mini marshmallows into the middle of each cupcake just for fun.

Next, I baked the cupcakes for about 20 minutes at 325 then let them cool completely. I actually put them in the fridge for a few minutes just to be sure the icing wouldn't melt. Here's the fun part, the icing... it would probably best be described by the term "omg" but I like to call it marshmallow buttercream. It's just your standard buttercream icing (2 sticks butter, 4 cups powdered sugar, little bit of milk) but I added a tub of marshmallow fluff to make it extra awesome. The first time I made these cupcakes I found that the icing didn't really "swirl" the way I wanted it to so I was pretty careful this time. I added just the tiniest bit of milk at a time to keep the icing from getting too runny and it really worked! See for yourself:

Now that's what I call cupcake perfection. Actually, the finished product is better but it's still pretty good at this stage. To finish things up I melted a combination of chocolate chips and milk chocolate baking chips in a double boiler (added a little butter to smooth it out). After I frosted the cupcakes I put them in the freezer so the frosting would harden enough to be dipped in chocolate. Once the icing was cool/hard enough I dipped all of the cupcakes in chocolate, sprinkled on some extra graham cracker crumbs and topped it off with a piece of Hershey's chocolate. 

Below I have a picture of a slight variation I tried. I promised my brother a cupcake delivery but since I ran out of graham cracker crumbs I had to try something else for the second batch. I filled the cupcake liners with chocolate cake batter then threw a handful of mini marshmallows on top and popped them in the oven. The marshmallows started to melt into the batter and browned around the edges, making them nice and toasty. The rest of the procedure was the same.

The cupcakes went over really well (both variations) so I think I'll have to add this concoction to my repertoire of favorite recipes. I have to say, I'm pretty excited about the chocolate-dipped frosting thing so don't be surprised if you start to notice a theme in future posts....