MSC: S'more Cupcakes

For this month's Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Club challenge, Mary Ann from Meet Me in the Kitchen chose the S'more Cupcakes from pages 150-151.

I made these for my girl's weekend (the one that broke my body) along with Dorie's Brownies for Julia, and I must admit that the brownies were a bit more appreciated than these. I made half a batch as to not be too overwhelmed with sweets, and still had several left over.

The cupcakes themselves were actually quite good, though mine sunk a little in the middle. I could not locate graham flour in this little town, and substituted wheat flour instead--they still had a graham cracker flavor in my opinion. Also, instead of making the chocolate glaze, I used some leftover ganache that I had in my freezer from Dorie's Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart.

see how they sank in the middle?

I had to make the marshmallow frosting and frost them in the morning and didn't finish until one of my girls had already arrived. It wasn't too complicated, but I think that they must use quite a bit more to frost it in the pictures than the recipes makes. With a half batch of frosting I still had about 3 of my half-batch of cupcakes left unfrosted. The book is correct when it says that the frosting hardens quickly--eep! And it was kinda hard to work with. Since I was chatting and beating the mixture and trying to frost them all about the same time, I did not have the time (nor the desire) to break out a piping bag and tip, so I just smeared it onto the tops with a spoon. Kinda messy, but oh well. Like I said, there was not nearly enough to get the kind of height that the picture from the book shows...or maybe I just didn't beat it enough. Who knows, my mind was on more important things!

not the exact image from the book, but this is the basic idea from her website.

You were also supposed to torch these--I did go out and buy a creme brulee torch, but did not get any butane and, again, had people there so I was not going to focus on lighting my cupcakes on fire!

All in all, I think these were pretty good. The cake itself had kind of a muffin texture (a complaint many in the group have had about a lot of the recipes) and they were definitely best eaten right away b/c the marshmallow topping got VERY hard. Hubs preffered these with just the cake and ate some like that, but was not a fan with the fixin's. Thanks for the pick Mary Ann! Head over to the Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Club to see what everyone else thought!