I come to you a perturbed baker who tripped along the path towards Martha's perfection. However, I would like to see Martha to attempt this recipe and come away unscathed. The idea is simple enough: put away those Little Debbie snack cakes and make some real chocolate cream cupcakes. The recipe is for jumbo-sized cupcakes, which I do not have a pan for, so I made two dozen normal-sized. I made it through the batter prep relatively easily, but I did notice that it was much more thick than past recipes. The only liquid came from 3 eggs, maybe converting the butter to canola oil would add some moisture.Another telling sign of possible disaster is that paper liners are not used. This is so that the filling can be inserted from the bottom, but also makes it difficult for the cupcakes to come out of the pans whole, especially if they're too dry. Oh, and another thing, inserting the filling from the bottom is a stupid idea, especially when the filling is marshmallow fluff, the stickiest stuff in the universe. The filling leaks out, sticks to bottom of the container, and gets on your hands. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. I found the best way to fill cupcakes is the way they do on Cupcake Wars (my favorite show): just jam the piping bag into the top and squeeze.
The icing on the top of the failure cake (pun intended) was the marshmallow cream filling. It gets EVERYWHERE. Luckily it is quite delicious, so you don't mind licking it off your fingers. However, my batch did not set up right and was much too liquidy. The squiggles on the top tuned into blobs and slowly dripped off the sides.
Even though the design aesthetic of these cupcakes failed, the taste was spot on. We had no trouble devouring them all, even if the process was a little messy. Now that I know the ups and downs of this recipe, I feel confidant that the next time I could give Little Debbie a run for her money.
