According to Wikipedia, the first recipe for s’mores was found in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts of 1927. The original recipe was simple and lists s’mores as we know it today:
Place a square of milk chocolate on a graham cracker. Toast a marshmallow and put on top of the chocolate, then a second graham cracker on top of the toasted marshmallow and squeeze and you will want “s’more”.
Pretty cute, right?
Since then, s’mores have taken on different shapes and sizes. Just googling around, there are a TON of recipes for different s’mores desserts: brownies, ice cream cakes, cookie bars, pie and even macarons!
My favorite s’mores variation, however, have always been cupcakes. After spotting such pretty versions from Linda and Kristin, I decided to recreate them for myself. My cupcakes are a little bit more, um… shall we say unrestrained? Especially since my version has three types of chocolate and two types of graham flavors:
Okay, wait, hold the phone. Three types of chocolate and two types of graham flavor??? What on earth does that even mean?!
Well, lemme break it down for you.
Let’s start from the top. Each individual cupcake has its own buttery, crunchy graham cracker crust as a base:
And then on top of the crust is a double chocolate graham cake base. Double chocolate since the cake gets its chocolate flavor from both cocoa powder and melted dark chocolate. Are you keeping count? That’s 2/3 chocolate types I claim in this recipe.
As for the graham, I also used a generous amount of graham flour in the batter to give the cake a hearty crumb. What is graham flour? I’ve written about its history in this recipe for whole grain chocolate muffins, but a quick recap is this: graham flour is a type of high-fiber, vitamin-dense whole wheat flour that was used in the original graham cracker recipe back in the mid 1800s. Unfortunately, graham crackers back then were chalky, tasteless and generally terrible since they consisted of only graham flour and water. Graham crackers today are much, much better, especially since, you know, they now have butter and sugar.
But why would I add such a weirdly healthy and kind of hippie ingredient to chocolate cake? Because together with chocolate, graham flour works magic. I swear to god it adds a flavor that’s reminiscent of toasted nuts that, in this particular cupcake recipe, is further enhanced by the graham cracker crumb base. It’s all sorts of amazing and wonderful.
(PS — if you’re keeping count, that’s TWO types of graham right there. That’s what puts the DOUBLE in this recipe for Double Graham S’Mores. BOOMCHICKABOOM.)
Now let’s move on to the next levels of the cupcake, shall we? Because on top of the chocolate graham cake sits a melty chocolate butter frosting reminiscent of the classic Hershey bar chocolate from all our childhoods (BOOM!!! Third type of chocolate, putting the Triple in the Triple Chocolate S’mores — I’m a lady of my word) BUT NOT GROSS AND WAXY (am I the only person who feels this way about Hershey’s chocolate? Is that an unpopular opinion?). And on top of the chocolate frosting sits a beautiful light-as-a-feather toasted marshmallow meringue icing:
So contrary to what you see in this picture above, the marshmallow meringue icing isn’t made from the weird, super-processed, jet-puffed marshmallows you get in the supermarket made from all sorts of terrible chemicals and extra animal parts. Instead, this icing comes from a homemade candy syrup whipped up with egg whites to create marshmallow meringue — meaning that it is 100% vegetarian. Seriously, so many of my tree-hugging Portland friends at my rock climbing gym cried tears of joy when I told them that they could eat these marshmallow topped cupcakes.
And there you have it! My s’mores cupcake breakdown shakedown! Enjoy — this recipe’s definitely going in the Classics (a.k.a. best recipes eveerrr) section of my Recipe Index. It’s one of my favorites of the year so far, and maybe even on the blog as a whole. It’s that good. Promise.
Some baker’s notes:
Graham flour is available online or in specialty health food stores. One of my favorite things about graham flour is that it lasts longer than other whole grain flours, so you can buy in bulk and use throughout the year. It especially works well in chocolate baked goods, and you can substitute graham flour for up to half of all-purpose flour in lighter baked goods. However, I wouldn’t use it in white cakes or angel food cakes since it tends to be heavier.
This chocolate graham cake is adapted from a recipe for double chocolate cake from Miette, one of my favorite cookbooks from an adorable bakery in San Francisco. Their chocolate cake recipe is one of my favorites to make and play around with — the cake isn’t that sweet, and instead has a rich, complex and bittersweet chocolate flavor. In addition to its flavor, the cake is crazy moist and has a wonderfully delicate and light crumb that’s achieved by a rather weird method: straining the batter through a fine mesh sieve to get rid of any lumps, as opposed to trying to stir them into the batter. I know that it’s kind of fussy but straining the batter prevents the overmixing that leads to dense, heavy cake. It’s worth it to strain, I promise.
Similarly, the marshmallow meringue icing comes from Miette as well. Unfortunately, the icing tends to deflate overnight, so it’s best to make and consume the icing on the same day.
I used a chef’s torch to lightly toast the marshmallow meringue and give it that pretty, toasted look. If you don’t have a chef’s torch, you can use your oven broiler. Place the cupcakes on a cookie sheet in the top shelf of the oven and broil for a minute to get a nice toasty marshmallow look — but watch the cupcakes carefully, since the meringue turns to brown and burn fast. There’s no saving them once they’re burned.
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