MangiaMore: S'moreScary cupcakes

RER 10.31.13

The second cupcake contender in the Halloween Cupcake Wars is s’more scary than the first. This spooky cupcake starts with a graham cracker crust, filled with devilishly decadent chocolate cake and topped with a pillow of ghostly white marshmallow buttercream. You know, S’moreScary.

RER 10.30.13

RER 11.1.13

I knew I wanted to make a s’mores cupcake, and I was creating my own until my little sister found this one on marthastewart.com. Initially, this most definitely dashed my creativity, but in the end, I hardly used her recipe at all. My sister made a basic graham cracker crust by Martha’s standards, and from there, improvisation. I used my all time favorite chocolate cake recipe, as seen on the back of the Hershey’s cocoa powder container. Boom.

RER 11.1.13

RER 10.30.13

 Even though I desperately wanted to go Martha on these cupcakes and do the fancy meringue marshmallow top and toast it with our non-existent kitchen torch, it just didn’t happen. The recipe was about 8 too many egg whites for my liking  (I tend to mess fluffy things up) and we were out of cream of tartar so I said “bump it!” Found a far less labor intensive (but still love intensive) marshmallow frosting, including one of my favorite things, fluff.*

RER 10.31.13

RER 10.30.13

RER 10.31.13

*note: In my youth (pronounced yoot), I was that girl that bought a tub of fluff from the local convenience store on my lunch break, and brought it back to school, straight up to the physics classroom. I would grab a few plastic spoons and we would pass around the container as our Finnish teacher would lecture and look at us with disgust (literal sticky notes). Shoot, looking back, I too am looking at ninth grade me with disgust.

RER 10.30.13

RER 10.31.13

These cupcakes were pretty good; a fun play on childhood memories like my messy shared fluff and making s’mores in our solar oven in like the second or third grade on the roof of my school, and campfires (though, that is probably not real life, because I don’t like camping or fires, but they look nice in the movies). I love that the tasty cake and kind of crispy crust and sweet sweet frosting bring on those kinds of moments, while creating new ones. The different textures are nice, from the crunch of the graham crackers, to the spongy cake and the springy stretchy frosting, but something brings it all together. Probably it is because the flavor combination is classic, and not so easily forgotten. This is my boyfriend’s favorite of the bunch, but…

There is a third. So check back to see what the last contender has to offer!

RER

11.5.13

RER 11.1.13