Happy Halloween with S'mores Cupcakes!

We have arrived! Halloween is here! Well, it was here. It's a day later, but I still need to share a Halloween themed post. Our Halloween was disappointing. Four lousy trick or treaters. I guess that's what you get when you're living in a high rise. We had bought scary masks, but every time we checked the eye hole, there was an adorable little kid dressed up in something cute, and we didn't feel right opening the door with those masks on! We're both looking forward to being in an actual neighborhood one day so we can deck out our house and really spook it up!

Despite the lackluster holiday I made a very fun creation which, I must say, I'm pretty darn proud of. One of my favorite snacks growing up were s'mores. But really, who doesn't like s'mores? My dad would start up the grill, and my brother, sister, and I would find sticks in our yard to use for roasting. We'd stand on our front porch and burn the crap out of our marshmallows on the grill, and it was wondrous. My love of s'mores has continued, and when I decided to make a Halloween treat for my class, I decided to combine my love of s'mores and baking!

I looked on pinterest for some inspiration, but I surprisingly didn't find any recipes I was thrilled with. I bought teeny, tiny marshmallows for garnish a month or so ago knowing I was going to tackle this project. So I saw marshmallow icing and all that, which I didn't want to do. I finally found a recipe I liked for the base of the cupcake. I wanted to do a graham cracker crust with a chocolate cupcake, and luckily, I found a recipe that gave me a great start on my design. While I used the recipe to get me started, the whole cupcake was really my creation, which I love!

For the cupcake portion, I used this recipe (with healthier substitutes) Burn me not: S'mores cupcakes. There are a lot of steps to this recipe, so rather than go through each in detail, I'm posting links and leaving you to your own creativity. I also improvised and put 5 or 6 chocolate chips into the cupcake before baking and buried them in the batter with a fork. Ideally, I wanted them to melt and create a molten, chocolatey center, but they ended up falling and didn't melt as much as I wanted. Still, it was a fun touch!

For the frosting, I used a basic vanilla buttercream. I already had marshmallow pieces for garnish, so I didn't want to overdue it. For the recipe, go to: Light and airy vanilla buttercream frosting. I think I'm adverse to frosting because I found this too sweet. However, no one else complained, and I've been finding I find most frostings too sweet for my taste. Ah well.

I garnished with crumbled graham cracker with a little piece stuck in there for a little added crunch. I was disappointed the little graham cracker piece was soft by the time they got to class a couple hours later, but they really were yummy.

I'm glossing over a lot of the detailed work these cupcakes required because I'd be here all day writing. I really couldn't believe the reaction to the final product! I was waiting at the elevator to head down to the garage in my building, when two kids walked up and were like, "Wow! Did you make those? What are you doing with them??" Then I walk into the elevator to see a maintenance worker already inside, and he says after a minute, "They look sooooooo delicious. Those are a diabetic coma waiting to happen." How cool! :) My classmates were impressed; many of them asking if I bought them because they've only seen cupcakes that look like that in a bakery. Wowzers! One of my classmates does the Paleo diet; she's a weight lifter, so I assumed she wouldn't have any. Surprise! She had two. Success? I think so.

Yes, this is a self-indulgent post just because I was thrilled with the feedback little-old-me received. Hubby brought them to work today, so fingers are crossed they're still yummy after two days!