Rainbows, Chocolate Marshmallow & THANKS.

First off, I'd like to say a big buttery THANKS to the crazy 24 followers of this blog. I have not been as loyal to updating the Spatula as I would like to be, schedule of life just doesn't quite allow it. But I will be better than I have been previously, since you guys deserve to see all the stuff that comes out of my kitchen, even if I can't make a big post accompanying the images.

I went back to my 'roots' this week, ala cupcakes! I had a request for rainbow cupcakes, and honestly I have never been crazy about these things from images I have seen online since it seems like most peeps use cake mix and then the frosting is all haphazard and crazy with rainbow sprinkles. So when a friend asked me to do them for a birthday, I thought REALLY? Are you sure? Yes well..I did it. And ummm, if I do say so myself they came out SUPER CUTE.



How do you make them? It's pretty easy. Take your favorite vanilla or butter cupcake recipe. Separate it into 3-4 small bowls, try to make them even because if you don't..as I found out, you are left a lot of batter for 2 colors only and then your 'rainbow' looks more like tie-dye. Spoon a bit of each batter into the cupcake liner. I guess some people do it right on top of each other, but I did it kind of side and top on each other and it came out cute. Not quite perfect, but I liked the look.



The other experiment that I spent a few hours on this week turned out to be Chocolate Marshmallow Cupcakes. Well to be honest with you, I started out trying to make S'mores Cupcakes since one of my pals has requested it for her bday and I want them to be PERFECT. I have seen a lot of S'mores recipes on the blogs. But I didn't want to do the typical graham crust, choco cake with marshmallow topping.

Taste wise they came out amazing...but sorry it wasn't S'mores. They need WAY more graham cracker. So back to the drawing board. However, they were somewhat inspired by Sprinkles Chocolate Marshmallow cuppie...which I had last week while we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary in Scottsdale, AZ, so it's not a total failure because those were bomb tasting. I definitely plan to make these beauties again and again.



Use your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe for these, I used the famous Epicurious 'most downloaded recipe' Chocolate Layer Cake. I filled them with marshmallow cream which is simply a bag of marshmallows, 1/4c milk, and 1/4c heavy cream heated up until it is all melty and warm. Let it cool up to 30 min and thicken, then cut out the tops of the cupcakes and spoon it in. Next time I will top them with marshmallow 7 minute frosting as well as have the cream inside, most people said it still needed more marshmallow, the chocolate was pretty intense. I dipped them in ganache for the tops, just using dark chocolate and heavy cream with some corn syrup. Still wondering about how to get the graham going in correctly.

While I noodle over how to make the base cupcakes turn into S'mores, I had to make actual S'mores for my hub and me on Friday night, yanno just to make sure I know what I'm trying to achieve. BTW, they were sinfully good, almost better than any gourmet dessert I have had. What's THAT about???