Camp-Out S'mores Cupcakes

I was trying to write a recipe that would be fun for winter. This Recipe is what I came up with. It brings back great memories of when I was a kid having s’mores by the campfire. Enjoy!

Ingredients

  • Chocolate cake ingredients:
  • ¼ cup instant chocolate pudding
  • ¼ cup milk cocoa powder
  • ½ cup boiling water
  • 2/3 cup shortening
  • 1 ¾ cups sugar
  • 1 tsp. Vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 ¼ cups unsifted cake flour
  • 1 ½ tsp. Baking soda
  • ½ tsp. Salt
  • 1 1/3 cups evaporated milk
  • Instuctions:
  • Pre-heat oven to 350*. Place paper cups in cupcake pans. (no need to grease), Stir together cocoa and boiling water in small bowl until smooth; set aside. Cream shortening, sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs; beat well. Combine flour, baking soda, salt and pudding; add alternating with milk to creamed mixture. Blend in cocoa mixture.
  • In prepared paper cups, pour mixture ¾ full in paper cups and cook for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Let stand in paper cups on wire rack to cool completely.
  • Chocolate Ganache ingredients:

  • 2 cup heavy cream
  • 13 ounces milk chocolate; broken into pieces
  • Instuctions:
  • Place the cream in a pot and bring to a boil, stirring. Add the chocolate and stir untl melted and combined. Pour into cool metal bowl and whip for 5 minutes or until ganache is fluffy and cool.
  • Filling cupcake and over top:
  • Place cupcake filler in pastery bag with a cupcake filler tip; fill bag with cooled ganache and push down into cupcake and squeeze, as you are squeezing pull out of cupcake and bring a little ganache over top of cupcake.
  • Graham Cracker Crumbs:

  • Place 6 graham crackers into ziplock back. Use hammer or something heavy and bang on graham crackers until finely crumbed. Sprinkle on top of chocolate ganache.
  • Meringue Cookie Ingredients:

  • 3 egg whites
  • 1 tsp. Vanilla extract
  • ¼ tsp. Cream of tarter
  • 1/8 tsp. Salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • Instructions:
  • Pre-heat oven to 250*.
  • Prepare pans by greasing and adding parchment paper on cookie sheet pans.
  • Whip egg whites, vanilla, cream of tarter and salt in a mixer bowl until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually, whipping constantly until stiff peaks form and all the sugar in added.
  • Place mixture in a ziplock bag or pastry bag; cut off end and squeeze enough out to make small cookie (big enough to top cupcake); shape of ice cream swirled in cone, onto prepared pans. Bake for 1 hour. Let stand on pans until cooled. Peel off parchement paper. Scorch Meringue cookie with a chef’s torch to look like camp fire s’mores.
  • Place Meringue Cookie on top of cupcake to finish.