Hot Chocolate cupcakes...take 1

Have you heard of the movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events" from a few years ago?  This could very easily describe my adventures in baking this morning.  I have been wanting to do a hot chocolate cupcake for some time, so I decided today was the day.  The powers that be in baking world had other plans.

I am still on the hunt for the perfect yellow cake recipe, so I decided to use a box mix and jack it up with butter and milk instead of vegetable oil and water.  That was fine.  They still taste box mix to me, but that's just me.

I tried to put together a chocolate mousse for the filling...and it broke.  I tried to fix it with more cream, and it broke again.  It did, however, taste really good.

Now came the marshmallow frosting.  I found an easy recipe with butter, marshmallow creme, powdered sugar and vanilla.  What could go wrong?  Yep, you guessed it....it did not set up.  I did not have the marshmallow creme, so I went to plan B and just melted marshmallows.  That was fine except I added too many.  Many scoops of powdered sugar later and adding some milk...I finally got something usable.  Again, tasted pretty good.

After all of these unfortunate events, I was feeling pretty defeated but I decided to soldier on and put this mess together.  I hollowed out the center of the cupcakes and dumped in my chocolate mousse mess.  Smeared some over the top of the cupcake.  I then topped that off with the soft marshmallow frosting.  I drizzled on some leftover chocolate sauce from my mousse attempt.  I frosted a few cupcakes, drizzled on the chocolate sauce and threw them in the refrigerator before they melted down over the cupcake.

Now, I am exhausted, but I take solace in the fact that they do not look terrible...and they don't taste terrible either.