Halfway Homemade:S'mores Cupcakes

So, a while back I found a recipe for s'mores cupcakes and I thought to myself "Boy, that sounds delicious!" and me being me, didn't get up right away and make them. While I was at the store today I walked past a shelf that had all the s'mores making ingredients and those cupcakes popped in to my mind and I decided I'd give it a whirl. I decided against scouring the internet for the original recipe I had found since I forgot to bookmark it the first time and just dove right in and made it up as I went along. 

Things I used:

 A little box of Devil's Food Cake cupcake mix

1 1/2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs

10 marshmallows

3 eggs

4 Tbs butter

1/2 cup water

1/4 vegetable oil

cupcake pan

cupcake liners (12)

 That is EVERYTHING you need!

Start by lining your pan with liners

(I think this pan is older than I am)

Then, cut 6 of your marshmallows in half and cut the remaining 5 in to thirds. It should wind up looking something like this:

I pinched the thirds out to make them flat and a little thinner. Put this in the refrigerator and leave them for now. Next get a bowl and mix up your cupcake mix according to the instructions

 

except add 1 extra egg to make it more moist. I also added about 1/4 cup of graham cracker crumbs to the mix to add a little more texture to the "cake" part of the "s'mores".

 You can't really see the little flecks of graham cracker crust but they are there. Set this mixture aside and move on to the graham cracker crust. Put 1 1/4 cup of graham cracker crumbs in a bowl and add 4 Tbs of butter. (I literally used a Tbs for this so I took a picture of what I am considering a Tbs)

Pour the butter in to the graham cracker crumbs and mix them up until they are all a little moist. Spoon 1 Tbs full(again using a regular spoon like the one pictured above) in to each cupcake liner and begin to press them flat against the bottom and slightly up the sides. 

(*You WILL have some crumbs left over! Don't worry I'll get to those in a sec!*)

I had already pressed one row but I wanted to show you what it looked like before they were pressed so you could kind of eyeball the measurement. This is what it looks like all pressed down and pretty!

Take your marshmallows out of the fridge and take each half and roll it a little between your hands as if you were forming a ball(which it kind of will)

Then plop a little mallow ball in to the center of each cupcake.

Back to those crumbs we had left over, it was only about maybe 1/4 a cup

I decided that since I didn't want to waste anything, that I would sprinkle half of it in to the batter and the other half I sprinkled over the mallow balls.

Then spoon in your cake mix and fill up the liners until they are 2/3 full. (*You will have some batter-maybe enough to make 1 regular cupcake- left over from this due to the graham cracker crumbs and marshmallow taking up some space. I discarded the remaining batter though since I don't have another cupcake pan*)

Bake these at 350 degrees for 17 minutes and then take them out. Then insert your mallow "discs" into the center of each cupcake for a cute little garnish. Put the cupcakes back in the oven for another 5 minutes and let the marshmallow discs toast a little and get a little brown on the edges. This is them fresh out of the oven.

I took them out of the pan immediately and put them on a plate to cool

I think they are adorable!

I am sure that there are a ton of variations you could do on this, I thought about one after I finished everything about how it would have been cute to use a little food coloring and make the disc sticking out of the cupcake look like a little flame or something!

Any who, once we tasted them I realized that the marshmallow inside had melted and just left a slight marshmallow taste on the inside (still tasted fairly similar to a s'more though!)...not the gooeyness I was hoping for so it was basically just hollow so if you wanted to skip that step you could and just add a little extra on top or maybe let them cook and remove the center then add a marshmallow and cook the last 5 minutes. 

You can vary it however you would like, I actually kind of like it being hollow in the middle...almost makes me feel like it's not as fattening! Haha!

My husband suggested that we take the disc topper out and pipe in some marshmallow fluff then replace the disc so we get the gooeyness we were going for...I knew I married him for something!

I guess making something you don't really know how to make is always going to be a learning experience and making these cupcakes was just another one of those things I'm learning from life!

(Special thanks to my husband, who probably won't read this, for writing down the measurements I was hollering out at him across the kitchen so I didn't forget)