Ever get a craving?  Sure you do.  Ever get a craving for food that you just can’t eat?  ME TOO!  I craved s’mores!   Now techinically I can eat s’mores, the difficulty I was having this past sunday, was that in order to make them I would need to build a fire.  Don’t get me wrong here, I definitely know how to build a fire, however the landlord of the apartment building I live was somewhat less then excited to here my plans for an in door fire pit.  (Some people!)

I though maybe I could try building it without her knowledge, but then I remembered that Twin is the appartment complex snitch, and she’d have no qualms about ratting me out! !!   So with my apparent lack of sibbiling loyalty I decided to create my own inside version of a S’mores!   Well, maybe “create” is a little to free of a term , I kinda stole ideas from 2 such recipes, and combined them to make my version!!

Here’s how it all went down.

First thing your gonna do is crush up approx 20 graham crackers and add 1/8-1/4 cup melted butter to the crumbs.  Mix that up so the crumbs are nicely coated, but don’t add t omuch butter.  We want just enough to make the crumbs not dry, but not enough to make that stick together.  Got it?    Good.

Take and spoon the crumbs into baking cups, I’m not entirely sure what the exact measurment is here, but lets say 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup.

Next, whip up a batch of chocolate cake batter!  I used a boxed mixed ( no hate mail please), Betty Crookers Chocolate fudge cake mix to be exact.  I added about 1/2 cup of flour to the box, it makes the cake a little more dense and not so airy.  I like my cakes denser and very moist!  Adding the extra flour seems to produce the results I like.

Fill the cups to about 2/3 ish full with the batter.  The throw them into a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes.  Check at 15 minutes to make sure your not overcooking them.

Perfect!  Set them out to cool.  Now lets make the to-die-for marshmellow icing!  First take 2 sticks of butter (room temperature please), and beat them until creamy.  Then add 2 cups icing sugar and beat that until its nice and fluffy.  Finally add 1/2 tsp vanila and 1 16 oz jar of marshmellow fluff!!!  (drool )   Whip the icing till smooth! 

Place the icing into a parchement icing bag and cut a large tip into it.  Swirl a very unhealthy amount of the icing over the cupcakes.  Next artfully place a piece of graham cracker and a piece of a Jersey Milk chocolate bar on top of each cupcake!

VOLIA!! You have just made S’Mores cupcakes!  They’re perfect for every occasion, family picnics, meetings, kids lunches, mid-night snacks and even pre-workout munchies (although that might be a conflict of interest)!!  And the best part is you don’t have to break any saftey or fire codes!  That’s what I call the best of both worlds.

Enjoy! 

Fondant is a beautiful and fun icing to cover and decorate cakes with.  However most fondant icing is tasteless at best, sometimes it even leaves a gross after taste. You can add flavourings to your fondant if you want or. . . .  . . You can make MARSHMELLOW fondant!! 

If you like the taste of Marshmellows, you’ll like this fondant.  If you like extremely easy recipes, you’ll like this fondant.  If you prefer to not add ingredients like glucose or glycerin to your baking, then you’ll like this fondant!

The ingredients for MMF are very simple:  Marshmellows, water, icing sugar and Crisco shorting.   Thats it!!  Four simple fun ingredients! 

Step 1:

Place 2 tablespoons of water and 16oz (or 2 cups) mini marshmellows in a bowl, over a pot of simmering water.  You could also use the microwave (if you enjoy killing your self slowly with harmfull micro-waves!!). 

Step 2

Generously grease the countertop.  Really grease that baby up!  Seriuosly you’ll feel like you’ve gain ten lbs just watching your self throwing the grease down.

Step 3:

Place 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar into the melted marshmellow mix.

Step 4

Dump  the mix onto the greased counter.  Grab about 1/4 cup of the shorting and slather it on your hands.  YUMMY!  Then digging into the lovely sticky mass and begin to knead the mix, adding icing sugar as you go.  You’ll probably use up to 3 1/2 – 4 cups icing sugar in TOTAL! 

Step 5:

Keep kneading and adding sugar until you have a ball of fondant that will be a good rollable consistancy and is also stretchy!  It took me between 8-10 minutes of kneading to get the icing to where I wanted it.  Also note that throughtout the whole kneading and sugar adding process you should keep reapplying shorting to your hands and the counter. You may not use the whole 1/2 cup but I know I sure did!

Step 6

Next double wrap the fondant in plastic wrap.  The adove work is a total of 3 double batchs of fondant.

Step 7

You can use the fondant right away, or you can store it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge for a good week or so.

There you have it!  A simple and satisfying fondant recipe.  I have yet to cover a cake with this perticular recipe (I have with the Wilton fondant recipe), but once I so I’ll let you know how it holds up!

Enjoy!