Campfire without the Fire: S'mores Cupcakes

I had (still have) plenty of egg whites left after making "lapis legit", which is a traditional Indonesian cake. It required 30 egg yolks and 500 g of butter to make one 8x8 square cake. Yeap, an instant heart attack in disguise, so don't be fooled by its innocent appearance :p

I could have made macarons with the leftover egg whites, but I was kind of bored of them. Unbelievable, right? Lol.. Anw, I was googling for how to use leftover egg whites when I stumbled upon this marshmallow frosting recipe from Martha Stewart. Hmm... the recipe asked for 8 egg whites, okay, that was at least almost 1/3 of the egg whites I had. Oh well, better than none. It said on the page that it was meant for Chocolate Graham Cracker Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallow, i.e. S'mores cupcakes. Never made that before, so I was pretty excited about making them. Looking through the ingredient list, I realized I didn't have any cocoa powder on hand and mannnn it was such a long list! I wasn't in the mood for baking something with that many ingredients. So as usual, I modified the recipe (below, yield 24 cupcakes) :p

Graham Cracker Crust

Ingredients:
~15 graham crackers, broken down into crumbs (about 1 1/2 cups)
3 Tbsp butter, melted

Directions:
1. Mix the crumbs and melted butter together.
2. Press onto the bottom of lined muffin pan.

Chocolate Cake
*You can follow Martha's recipe or just get a box and mix according to manufacturer's direction like I did. Pour batter on top of the graham cracker crust and bake for 20 mins at 350 F. Let cool.

Marshmallow Frosting
*Use Martha's recipe.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate
8 oz heavy cream

Directions:
1. Heat heavy cream in a microwave for ~1 min or until it boils (be careful, it can boil over very fast).
2. Pour the boiling heavy cream on top of the chocolate and let sit for 1 min.
3. Stir the mixture until smooth and let cool.

Assembly:
1. Reserve about 1/2 cup of the ganache and pipe the rest into the cooled cupcakes with a large star tip. Don't overfill, the cupcakes will break.
2. Pipe a mount of marshmallow frosting with a large plain tip on the filled cupcakes.
3. Using a blow torch, burn the marshmallow frosting to get the toasted look.
4. Melt the reserved ganache until completely melted and drizzle on top of the toasted frosting.
5. Top the cupcakes with a piece of chocolate bar (I used Hershey's and Ghirardelli), a piece of graham cracker, and a large M&Ms (I used M&Ms pretzel).

What about the taste you say? Well, if you ask me, you can never go wrong with fluffy toasted marshmallow frosting, dense chocolate cake, creamy ganache filling, and an extra crunch from the graham cracker crust and topping. It's good enough to eat :p If you want that campfire taste without having to built a fire, just try this recipe and have fun with it :)