FAIL: Homemade Hostess Cupcakes

This is my first food post and it's going to be about how I failed at making cupcakes. Great.....I hope ya'll (like my Texas accent?) don't get the impression that I can't cook because I can. Like I said before my niece and nephew is staying with me for a week in the summer, so I thought it would be fun to make cupcakes with/for them. They wanted chocolate cupcakes, so I pulled up the Hostess Cupcake recipe (w/ pictures) to show them and they screamed "YES, THAT ONE!" This is the recipe I kind of followed to make these Hostess Cupcakes - Brown Eyed Baker. In the end, the cupcakes still tasted very good, so all was not lost.

All the recipes for the Hostess Cupcakes used chocolate cake made from scratch and I wasn't about to do that, so I replaced with a box of chocolate cake mix. First, I made the cupcake from the directions on the box (easy peasy) and preheated the oven.

After everything was thoroughly mixed, I spooned out the mix into the cupcake pan. Given this is my second time making cupcakes, I just eyeballed how much to put into the pan and hoped it doesn't blow up too much.

I guess I did alright with the portions. The cupcakes didn't poof up too much. 

 

Making the filling and chocolate ganache is where I messed up. I was tired and it was getting late and that is the excuse I'm using. For the marshmallow filling I mixed together the following: 1 jar of marshmallow cream, unsalted butter and powder sugar. For the chocolate ganache, I mixed together: semi-sweet chocolate morsels and heavy cream.

Mistake #1 - I added water to make the filling. By adding water, I made the filling too runny and it ended up being soaked into the cupcakes.

Mistake #2 - I didn't core the middle of the cupcakes. I just squeezed the filling in, so I had no idea how much or little was actually going into the cupcakes.

Mistake #3 - Not measuring the correct amount of chocolate to heavy cream. I put too much heavy cream, so the ganache came out runny and it didn't coat the top very well. This is how my end product looked.

I gave up on the signature Hostess Cupcake swirls. After this round of cupcakes, I came to the conclusion that I'm not a cupcake baker because I just don't have the patience for it. I will probably give it a whirl a few months down the line, but for now "I HATE making cupcakes! I LOVE eating them only!"