Playing with fire....

Ok, it's getting late and it's a weeknight, so I will make this a quick post! Summer is here and I have been noticing a lot BBQ/grilling inspired food products at the grocery store lately, one of them is S'mores! There are s'mores ice cream, s'mores cookies and even a s'mores making kits! I love S'mores, I mean what is there not to like, it's chocolate, marshmallows and cookies are wrapped into one.

I decided to whip up a batch of  s'mores inspired cupcakes for a coworker farewell party one night, and here is what I did:

S'mores Cupcakes (Trial and Error)

2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1 box of Swiss chocolate cake mix
3/4 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
Melted chocolate (Semi-sweet chocolate blocks/chips melted in the microwave)
Jumbo Marshmallows

I have never made these before and didn't really follow any recipes, all of them were trail and error. Since I was too lazy to make a real marshmallow topping (ie. using egg white, etc) and decide to just use the marshmallows I already had, I had to be creative.

Preheat oven to 375F. Mix the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and butter together, press the mixture into the bottom of the muffin liner. Bake for 15 minutes, keep an eye on this, it burns very easily (Sigh, which is what  did).

Prepare the cake mix as per package instruction, mix the semi-sweet chocolate chips into the mixture. Pour cake mix into the muffin pan and bake as directed.

After the cupcakes are cooled down, this is the fun decorating part.

Option #1: Scoop out a little piece of the cupcake top, and drizzle melted chocolate into the hole, place a jumbo marshmallow on top, slightly burn the top of the marshmallow with a blowtorch (or use a ghetto lighter like me, since I don't have a blowtorch and would LOVE to have one..hint hint HUBBY!). This option makes a really cute cupcake, but the marshmallow cools down very fast and doesn't really have that melted gooey taste...but it's still good if you stick it into the microwave for 15 seconds before serving.






Option #2: Melt some of the marshmallow in the microwave, dip the cupcake into the mixture, and place them under the oven broiler to brown the top. This is fast and easy, super gooey, but it burns really quickly and the final product doesn't look that great.

Option #3: Exactly same as option#2, but instead of placing them under the broiler, I torched each cupcake with my ghetto lighter (at least it's the kind of light with a long tube piece, not the ones you put in your pocket). This is my favorite one, it was warm, gooey and looks good, but it took forever since I didn't have the proper equipment.

 The next time I make these, I will continue to use the cake mix, which saves a lot of time, but will definitely spend time to make a real marshmallow topping and invest in a blow torch! But nonetheless, it was a pretty decent cupcake!