Recipe: Faux Hostess Cup Cakes

It's been a sweet couple of days. I usually emphasize savory dishes in this blog, because I don't have any original baking recipes (sorry, but I have to use a recipe to make chocolate chip cookies!) and because I'm not usually a big fan of sweets.
But I had this idea. I want to create the perfect cupcake. I bought some vanilla pudding mix (I feel that adding vanilla pudding mix to cake batter will make it more moist) and I already had marshmallow fluff from last Friday's post, so I decided to experiment.
I mean, even a failed cupcake is a cupcake, yeah?
Fortunately, these cupcakes did not fail. They were quite delicious, actually. And though they do not, in fact, contain vanilla cream in the middle, like Hostess Cupcakes do, they have marshmallow fluff.
Which might be better, actually.

Recipes borrowed and slightly altered from their original versions in "Perfecting the Cupcake" from the Food and Wine May 2008 issue.
Ingredients:
Chocolate Cake:
4 TB butter
1/2 C veggie oil
1/2 C water
1 C flour
1 C sugar
1/4 C + 2 TB unsweetened cocoa powder - I used sweetened cocoa powder that I had laying around the house, and cut the sugar in half.
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1/4 C buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TB instant vanilla pudding mix
1 TB marshmallow fluff per cupcake.

Frosting:
6 TB softened butter
2 C confectioner's sugar (powdered)
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
2 TB milk, half and half, or cream
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted

Preheat the oven to 350˚.
Melt the butter with the oil and the water over low heat.
Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and pudding mix.
Add the melted butter to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. I am your butter river, carving up your valleys.
Mix mix mix.
Add the egg, buttermilk and vanilla and mix until all ingredients are incorporated. Oh, shiny!
Pour the batter into lined muffin tins, about half of the way full. Add 1 TB of marshmallow fluff to each tin.
Cover with the remaining batter.
Bake for approximately 25 minutes.

While you wait for the cupcake to bake, make the frosting. I, regretfully, do not have any frosting pictures. Use your collective imagination. Thick, creamy, chocolatey. . .mmmm.

Melt the chocolate and allow it to cool down before you cream it together with the butter. Mix the two ingredients together until they are smooth.

Mix in the sugar, vanilla, and salt, and mix until smooth. Add the cream, milk or half and half and beat until fluffy.

When you take the cupcakes out of the oven, make sure they have time to cool down before you frost them or the frosting will just melt all over the place.
This is the most artistic cupcake picture I have ever taken.
Yum yum yum!

Do your best to share. It will be difficult. These cupcakes are very, very good.

<3 Stef