For a recent work gathering I made these Campfire S’mores Cupcakes - I had to “compete” with the hamburger cupcakes I made last year, afterall. 
They are a yellow box mix with an added egg & butter substituted for the oil. The s’mores flavor comes from chocolate frosting and chocolate “rock” candies, graham cracker crumbs, and marshmallow frosting.
I looked at a few recipes for the campfire decorating and picked the ideas I liked best, then found a marshmallow frosting recipe to use for the flames. I used only half the marshmallow creme/fluff that the recipe called for - it still had plenty of marshmallow flavor and was way more frosting than I needed.
Here’s how it goes!
Bake your cupcakes and let cool. Add a thinnish layer of choclate frosting (this was also premade to save me some time and waste). Then dip the frosted cupcakes in graham cracker crumbs. You can buy the crumbs already… crumbed, but I crushed the crackers since I don’t have a use for the rest of the crumbs, but I can use the extra crackers. Plus it gave me a more natural look with the varying sizes of the crumbs.
Next, add your campfire circle of chocolate candy rocks, put a daub of choclate frosting in the middle and add pretzel stick “logs.” My pretzel sticks were long, so I broke them in half. After this photo was taken, I realized that I liked the look of the broken end pointing out - they looked more like firewood that way.
After making the marshmallow frosting I separated it into two bowls, dying one orange and the other yellow. Then I followed online direction for piping more than one color at once to make the flames. Some have two flames, some one. I used a Wilton 1M tip. To give it just one more little touch, I put mini marshmallows on toothpicks to “roast” over the fire. I wish I’d thought to brush a little baking chocolate on them to make them look more roasted.
They were a hit! My recipe made 22, but some were too big, so 24 is totally reasonable. It took way more rocks than expected. I thought I bought plenty, but a few cupcakes didn’t get them.
Tips:
- Don’t do the graham cracker step and after until the day of. The crumbs and pretzels lose their crispness and the crumbs kind of “melt” into the frosting.
- For the same reason, have a plan to distribute as many as possible! I sent guests home several - insisted, actually - but still had more than we could eat before these parts were unpalatably “soggy.” The flavors were still good, though!
)! I love all the little details right down to the rock fire pit. And your cupcake tray looks like it was made to hold s’mores cupcakes, though knowing you, it probably was!
