Smores Cupcake Base:

2 cups cake flour

½ cup cocoa powder

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 ½ cups whole milk

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

½ tsp. almond extract

12 tbsp. unsalted room temp. butter

2 cups baker’s sugar

6 large egg whites at room temp.

Extras:

One 12-16 ox bag of chocolate chunks

One bag of large marshmallows

1-2 tbsp. vegetable oil

A butane torch

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 cupcake pans with paper cups.
Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine the milk and flavorings.

In the electric mixer, mix together the butter and sugar for apx. 3 minutes until it looks light in color and completely combined. The mixture will be clumpy. Add the flour mixture and the milk mixture alternately. Add the flour mixture in three additions and the milk mixture in two additions (starting and ending with the flour mixture.) Set aside.

Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Add one third of the egg whites to the cake batter, gently folding it in. When no white streaks remain, fold in the remaining two thirds into the cake batter. No white streaks should remain.

Use a disher to pour the batter into the cupcake pans. Fill each cup two-thirds full. Crumble some of the graham crackers and slightly chop some of the chocolate chunks, combine in a bowl. Top each cupcake with a generous amount of this mixture. Bake for Apx. 15 minutes.

While the cupcakes cool, cut the marshmallows into halves. When the cupcakes are completely cool, top each cupcake with two marshmallow halves. Torch those suckers with a butane torch from that crème brulee kit you never use! Careful though, because they will catch fire, and you do have to blow out a lot of “birthday candles.” I found it actually works best to torch the bottoms of the marshmallows (the side with the powdery dusting) first, then quickly turn them over and smoosh them on to the cupcake. The cup sides should be up. The cut sides will yield a much nicer looking caramelized top when you finish torching the marshmallows (plus, they stick to the cupcake better.)