Thursday, August 28, 2008

Everyone loves S'mores!

As I showed below, I am now getting special requests for my cupcakes and that is the biggest boost to my ego! I won't lie.
Luckily I had a half day at the office yesterday so I had time to whip up the two different types of cake requested. Even so, I was still up until 10pm baking but I did take a break to fix some bad ass hamburgers for dinner. I even skipped Project Runway to get this stuff done so I hope they're appreciative! (don't tell them I have a DVR and can watch it today)

Look at that lovely. It tastes as good as it looks too. One day I will find a light and fluffy marshmallow icing recipe but this is the 2nd one I've tried and it turned out the same as the first - a bit runny and VERY sticky.

For the Cupcake:
I had some sweet German Chocolate in the pantry and just used the recipe for Sweet Chocolate Cake inside the box. You want to talk about light and fluffy, this cake batter is it! I could eat it out of a bowl it is so delicious!

1 pkg Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate
1/2 cup water
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine (I always use real butter)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs separated
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, put 1 Tbl. white vinegar in the milk and let sit for about 5 min. I had to do that and it turned out just fine!)

Preheat oven to 350F. Microwave chocolate and water in microwavable bowl on High for 1-2 min. or until chocolate is almost melted, stirring after each minute. Stir until chocolate is completely melted.

Mix flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. (I sifted mine b/c I get great satisfaction from sifting ingredients into a nice, neat pile.) Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electri cmixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in chocolate mixtures and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating until well belnded after each addition.

Beat egg whites in a separate bowl with electrix mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently sir into batter.

Pour into cucpakes pans (an ice cream scoop works perfectly) and bake for 20 min. (Note: b/c these were S'more cupcakes, I put a bit of crushed graham cracker crumbs in the bottom of each cupacke liner)

For the icing, I used Paula Deen's Marshmallow Icing recipe:

2 egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
5 Tbl. cold water
2 Tbl. light corn syrup
1 cup mini marshmallows

Cook egg whites, sugar, water, and corn syrup over a double boiler and beat for 5 minutes. (this too me WAY longer than 5 min - close to 10). Stir in marshmallows until melted.

I then beat the crap out of that icing with my hand mixer for another 10 minutes to cool it down and try to stiffen it up. Of course with only 2 egg whites in it, there wasn't much stiffening to be done.

I will never work with marshmallow icing in a piping bag again. It is a sticky mess and no matter how tightly I held that bag, it was more than determined to sneak up and out and all over my hand. I used the filling tip and filled the cup cakes with the marshmallow mixture and then filled in the top of the cupcake. It helped that mine were a litte undercooked and therefore sunka bit in the middle creating the perfect marshmallow bowl! I then sprinkled some graham cracker crumbs on top and added a square of Hershey's chocolate and Viola! S'more cupcakes!

Happy Birthday Couture Girl!


2 comments:

How To Eat A Cupcake said...

Ooh they look GREAT! I have 2 marshmallow frosting recipes in the drop-down list on the left side of my blog. They're both yummy!

Prudy said...

Those would be a hit with my family.