S'mores Cupcakes

I saw a segment on Martha Stewart a long time ago where she made s'more cupcakes and they were so cute. Tonight because I should be reading about the estrus cycle, I decided to finally try it out. I didn't really follow Martha's recipe, although her frosting idea might have worked out better than what I did. She made a swiss meringue and piled it up on the cupcake like marshmallow frosting. I will preface this post by saying, the cupcakes tasted really good but I am unhappy with the marshmallow application. If anyone has a better idea, I would love to hear it! So here is my "invention":

First I took one sleeve of graham crackers, put them in a ziplock, placed a dishtowel over it and crushed them with a rolling pin. You could also do this in a food processor but I didn't feel like washing it. Next, I added 1/4 sugar right in the bag and shook it around. Again, I didn't feel like washing another bowl.

Next, I melted 1/3 C butter in an Eskimo Joes cup in the microwave. That is how all the gourmet chefs melt butter. They all carry their own Joe's cup along with their knives on Top Chef, I'm sure of it. Then I just poured the butter on in the ziploc and closed it up and shook it around until everything was well combined.

Then I put liners in my cupcake pan and spooned about 1-2 T of the graham cracker mixture into each paper and used a glass to smoosh it flat. If you spin the glass before lifting, it won't stick.

Then I sprinkled a few chocolate chips over the graham crackers (Martha said to use roughly chopped bitter sweet chocolate but I didn't have any and I didn't want to go to the store). Then I put the pan in the oven at 350 F for about 5 minutes just so the crust would set up. Then I took it out and let it cool before added the batter.

In the meantime I whipped up my standard chocolate cake batter. It is the same one I posted in the Reese's Peanut Butter Cupcakes blog. If I were an intelligent blogger, I would put the link right here where you could click on it. But I have no idea how to do that so you're just going to go back and look yourself, if you want it. If you don't, use your favorite chocolate cake recipe or boxed mix.

So as I was saying, I whipped up the batter and loaded it into a ziploc. I learned this trick from one of my cupcake cookbooks, called Hello Cupcake. This book is awesome by the way, it has the cutest ideas. So anyway, what you do is take a big ziploc and fold it over a pitcher, like so:

Then, fill it with your batter, smooth as much air out as you can and seal the bag. Make sure you seal it really well and don't use the cheap bags here. If you do not follow these instructions and use the cheap bags, I will not be held responsible for the mess that you will make.

Then snip the corner off the bag with scissors. Start small. It is kind of like sedating a horse, you can always add a little more but you can't take it back, so don't make your snip too big! Also I usually keep a plate under the edge of the bag to catch the drips. Actually that isn't true. I always add sour cream to my cake batter so I use the sour cream lid to catch the drips.

So now use your ziploc and gently squeeze the batter into the cupcake liners. It takes a little practice but in my hands I make much less mess with this method than trying to spoon in the batter. So fill the liners about 3/4 full. Then take 2-3 more graham crackers and smash em up and then sprinkle some over the top of each batter filled cup. Then, just because it feels right, sprinkle on some chocolate chips too.

Now throw them in the oven and bake them for about 20 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

Okay, here was my dilema: first, I tried to lay a Hershey square over the the top of each hot cupcake and then stick a few marshmallows on the hot cupcake. They kept falling off. So then I cut them in half and stuck the sticky part to the cupcake. This helped but they still weren't stuck as good as I would like. Then I used my kitchen torch to brown the marshmallows. I heart my kitchen torch and any opportunity to break it out makes me happy.

This is how they looked with the "scissor torch" method:

So then I decided to try putting the Hershey square and marshmallows on the cupcake about 5 minutes before they were done baking and letting the oven do the browning. This worked okay but the marshmallows reminded me of sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving instead of s'mores and the Hershey square melted beyond recognition. I just don't like the presentation. This is how they looked with the "oven method":

Both methods tasted really good. This is what the crust looked like:

Adorable, huh?

So does anyone have any ideas for marshmallow attachment? Especially one where I can still use my torch? My torch really does make me happy, I'm thinking about making pumpkin creme brulee for Thanksgiving...