S’more Cupcakes

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I love s’mores. In fact, it must be a hereditary thing – my mom, dad, and sister all love them too.

Or it’s because they’re just so damn good. I mean, ooey, gooey, marshmallows with a toasted brown top and melty chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers? Oh my god, yum.

Either way, when I polled my friends to get cupcake suggestions for our New Years’ party (I’m the “cupcake lady”, it’s pretty much expected I show up to parties with cupcakes – I suspect I’d be sent home if I ever came without them ;) a number of them suggested s’more cupcakes.

Okay, I said, sounds interesting!

And delicious.

Interestingly delicious.

The delicious s'more cupcakes in all their glory.

Afterall, how can taking someting like a s’more and turning it into a cupcake be a bad idea? I started thinking about it. Graham cracker crust, chocolate marshmallow cake, and marshmallow icing – sounds delish.

And they were.

I’m not always one to toot my own horn, but OH MY GOD they were so. good. And I think the fact that the 20 s’more cupcakes I brought to the party were eaten in under 30 minutes is a testament to that.

So of course, I have to (and was even asked to!) share the recipe.

There’s three parts to it – the graham cracker crust, the actual cupcake, and the marshmallow icing.

The best part is, it’s a fairly simple recipe to make.

Recipe: S’more Cupcakes

Graham Cracker Crust // 10 minutes at 325° // makes 21 crusts

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1.5 cup graham crumbs
• 1/3 cup melted butter

Mix the sugar and graham crumbs in a bowl, then melt the butter in the microwave (or on the stove!) and add it to the dry mix.

Stir until totally combined.

Next, spoon a heaping tablespoon of the mixture into the cupcake pan (I managed to fill 21), and press it down into the bottom so it’s firm.

I didn’t use cupcake wrappers to bake these in, but you probably could if you really wanted to.

Oh, and I used a shot glass to pack in the crumb mix, which worked pretty well.

Once they’re pressed into cup form, use your fingers to press the crumbs into the edges of the pan.

Pop them into the oven at 325° for ~10 minutes, until they are a little more solid (and a little less crumbly). I heard they’re supposed to be “golden brown” but honestly, I couldn’t see a difference… so about 10 minutes seemed to work for me.

Let them cool completely before filling them.

S’more Cupcakes // 20 minutes at 350° // makes 21 cupcakes with crusts

• The graham cracker crusts from the above step
• Your favourite chocolate cake recipe
• Large marshmallows

I don’t have a “favourite” chocolate cake recipe yet (typically I try new ones most times when I bake – so if you have one you love, let me know! ;) so use whichever recipe you love for the cupcakes. And, I have to be honest – I was lazy and just went with a box mix for these (thanks Betty Crocker!), but they turned out awesome anyway… so you can even go with a box mix if you’re lazy like me.

Spoon a bit of the batter into each graham cracker crust, and then place a large marshmallow into each cup.

Use the remainder of the batter to cover the marshmallows and fill the cups.

Pop them into the oven for ~20 minutes at 350°. Most of the marshmallow will melt away into the cupcake (which makes them really tasty, PS), but some will float all melted to the top and crust over in golden brown toasted marshmallow goodness.

Baking...

To remove, I used a knife to “carve” the edges of the cupcake out of the pan and then gently lifted them out. Flipping the pan (like I did with the first one) only got one cupcake out, and made a MESS with the graham crumbs. Carving them out worked much better – they will stick a little more than usual at the top because of the marshmallow stickyness, so be gentle to avoid ripping the cupcake.

Set them aside to cool, and prep your marshmallow icing.

...baked!

Buttercream & Marshmallow Icing // makes 3.5 (ish) cups

• 1 cup solid white vegetable shortening
• 3 tbsp water (then to thin out to “medium” consistency, I added 3 tsp and 1 tbsp of water after mixing)
• 4 cups icing sugar
• 1 tbsp meringue powder
• 2 jars of marshmallow fluff (approximately 1 3/4 cups) OR 1 jar and 1 cup (this last one was what I used)

The above recipe is the modified version of the Wilton Butercream Icing recipe I use for decorator icing, only I’ve removed the flavouring and replaced it with a ton of marshmallow fluff instead. I used the second marshmallow part – 1 jar of fluff and 1 cup (ish) of melted marshmallows, but this was largely because I decided I needed more fluff in the recipe (since it didn’t taste enough like marshmallows, and, uh, marshmallow icing should TASTE like marshmallows!) and the stores were closed by this point… so I improvised.

I’d recommend using 2 jars of fluff (approximatly 2 cups), because the melted marshmallow was very challenging to mix into the icing and had small chunks of crystalized marshmallow/icing that kept getting stuck in the icing tip – but it TASTED great. Not overpoweringly marshmallow, but you could tell a hint of the flavour was there.

I actually might even try modifying this recipe to have more marshmallow fluff next time – I’m thinking an equal amount of fluff and icing sugar, so 3/4 cup shortening, 2 1/4 tbsp water, 3 cups icing sugar, 3/4 tbsp meringue powder, and 3 cups of marshmallow fluff (so I really need to find a place that sells larger jars!) to make it even more marshmallow flavoured.

Finally, after icing the cupcakes, I cut a bunch of the large marshmallows in half and dipped one end into melted chocolate and let them harden (in the fridge to speed it up).

Then stuck them into the icing for decoration. Simple, right? But cute!

The final product:

Look pretty good, right?

The combination of chocolate, marshmallows, and the graham cracker crust really made them s’more like.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did – I’ll be making them again, and likely soon.

Part of Sweets For a Saturday #51 & Sweet Treat Thursday .