S'mores Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting

I found the most gorgeous looking S'more cupcakes on Annie's Eats Blog and had to make it mostly for my love of all things Marshmallow and Chocolate and well...S'mores in general. I swapped out her posted chocolate cake recipe for a Chocolate Cupcake recipe I have used a few times from JoyofBaking.com.

We are getting ready to move again so things are beginning to become quite hectic with less time to bake and even less time to post photos with packing and last minute travels whatnot so these photos are a bit late.

Yield: 24 cupcakes
Ingredients:
For the graham cracker crust:

• 1½ cups graham cracker crumbs
• ¼ cup sugar
• 5 1/3 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
• 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used only 3 ounces and next time probably would not use any as I did not notice this extra step)
  

Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 1/2 cup (50 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1 cup (240 ml) boiling hot water
• 1 1/3 cups (175 grams) all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For the frosting:

• 8 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• ½ tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

Crust:
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line two cupcake pans with paper liners. In a small mixing bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and melted butter; mix well with a fork. (I used my hands to get even consistency throughout) Drop about 1 tablespoon of the graham cracker mixture in the bottom of each cupcake liner and press down to line the bottom. Sprinkle a small amount of the chopped chocolate on top of the graham cracker crusts. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and maintain the oven temperature.

Chocolate Cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly butter, or line 16 muffin cups with paper liners.

In a small bowl stir until smooth the boiling hot water and the cocoa powder. Let cool to room temperature.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Then in the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat only until incorporated. Then add the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

Fill each muffin cup about two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 16-20 minutes or until risen, springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

Marshmallow Frosting:

Combine the egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it reaches 160° F with an instant-read thermometer. (I do not own a thermometer so I whisk until the sugar has completely dissolved) Transfer the mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk starting at low speed and gradually increasing to medium-high speed until stiff, glossy peaks form. Mix in the vanilla until combined. Frost cooled cupcakes as desired. Brown with a kitchen torch and garnish with chocolate and graham cracker segments (optional).

Place 12 whole sheets of graham crackers in a plastic bag

Continue to pulverize graham crackers until a nice crumbly consistency!

I found chopping chocolate squares not quite so easy, so please tell me your methods! Eventually I began scrapping the knife down the short side of the chocolate and it worked fairly well.

Using the bottom of a tall shot glass, I pressed the graham cracker then sprinkled the chocolate in each cup.

I wanted to add marshmallows to the inside so I created two small holes then pressed mini marshmallows in while the cupcakes were still hot so they would be melt-y.

The EZ Egg Cracker (an as seen on TV gimmicky looking gadget) is awesome! I cracked and separated all the eggs in record time! Separate eggs while still cold for easiest separating then let egg whites warm to room temperature.

It may take some time but if you keep mixing...

and mixing...

You will have the most gorgeously glossy AND tasty marshmallow frosting! Yum!!

I did not have a kitchen torch and as we are moving out of the country soon and kitchen torches are airplane friendly I opted to brown in the oven. BE VERY CAREFUL here if you try this! As you can see, the cupcake on the far left caught on fire as it was too close to the top. Not a very safe idea unless you pay very close attention to the cupcakes.

These were soo good. The toasted marshmallow topping was delicious and looked so nice.

Cheesecake Cupcakes

Tip:

• Use aluminum foil cupcake liners for cheesecake cupcakes so your cheesecake does not soak through the paper liner and make a mess.
• If you do not have sour cream on hand, use yogurt. Put yogurt into cheesecloth or coffee filter and place it over a bowl or cup making sure to have room for the liquid to drain and let sit for 30 minutes. Since sour cream is thicker than yogurt, this will allow the yogurt to become a thicker consistency and perfect for use in everything from baking to spinach and artichoke dip!

As I am sure many people are quite tired (possibly someone in my apartment??) of cupcakes everywhere, I decided to try a different spin on cup"cakes" and I was surprisingly pleased with the results partly because I don't typically like cheesecake and mostly because I forgot to set the timer and I have absolutely no sense of time!

So I bring to you,... Cheesecake Cupcakes!

Basically a blank canvas, Cheesecake Cupcakes and Vanilla Cupcakes are very much alike in that you can instantly change the flavor by choosing from a multitude of toppings. This past week, while devouring them, we have tried the Cheesecake cupcakes by themselves, topped with raspberries, topped with cool whip and raspberries, cut into pieces and drizzled with chocolate... you get the idea. Nothing failed! It was always delicious!

So here is the recipe from "125 Best Cupcakes" book by Julie Hanson with my various tweaks and notes in italic.

Cheesecake Cupcakes

• Muffin pan for 12 cupcakes
• 12 foil cupcake liners

CRUST:

• 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 7 graham crackers)
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tbsp packed light brown sugar

FILLING:

• 12 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs

TOPPING:

• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 3 tbsp granulated sugar

CRUST:
1. In a food processor, turn graham crackers into crumbs, or just crumble them yourself. I put the graham crackers into a plastic bag and with a rolling pin crushed them.
2. Mix together graham cracker crumbs, melted butter and brown sugar. To get an even consistency of the butter and sugar, I used my hands to mix the mixture together so all of the graham cracker mixture would have moisture throughout.
3. Press mixture into bottoms of prepared cupcake liners.








FILLING:
1. In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse cream cheese until smooth. You don't want to overprocess the mixture; you just want it to be smooth. I used a handheld mixer for the entire filling process.
2. Add sugar, pulsing until smooth.
3. Add sour cream, pulsing until smooth.
4. Add eggs, pulsing until smooth.
5. Scoop filling over crust in foil cupcake liners.
6. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes or until centers of cupcakes are firm.
7. Let cool in the pan or on a rack for 5 minutes.



TOPPING:
1. In a small bowl, stir together sour cream and sugar. I ran out of sour cream so I spooned Greek Yogurt into a coffee filter over a cup to remove the excess liquid and proceeded with using the Greek Yogurt as a substitute.
2. Gently spoon and swirl (using back of spoon) mixture over cupcakes, covering tops.
3. Return to oven and bake for 4 minutes.
4. Let cupcakes cool to room temperature.
5. Remove from pan.
6. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight to chill completely.



Luckily, even though I forgot to set the timer, the cheesecake tasted perfect, not over or underdone. My cheesecake cupcakes did puff up quite a bit though resulting in cracks on top and a slightly sunken in cheesecake when cooked. Maybe I over-beat the mixture, whipping too much air into the eggs and whatnot? I will try this recipe again and try not to forget I am mixing a cheesecake and not cake. Could this possibly be why the original recipe was mixed with a food processor and not a handheld mixer with beaters?

Typically with cheesecakes you should set them in a water bath so the steam and heat will help prevent curdling, cracking and over darkening of the exterior of the cheesecake but since I did not have a pan large enough to put a cupcake tin in, I could not do this. However, I do not believe this caused the cracking at the top of my cupcakes since I do not think the steam would have prevented the puff up.