How to Make Hostess Cupcakes at Home

The Hostess Cupcake is second perhaps only to the Twinkie, and is best known for its oddly alluring plastic-like chocolate frosting with white squiggles, which spreads across the top like a bedspread, hiding the chocolate crumb cake and creamy center beneath. The frosting is often eaten as its own rightful snack, peeled away, considered, nibbled on, perhaps put back, maybe set to rest on a desk while you make your way into the cake. Or, if you do as one kid at my third grade lunch table preferred, you can dip it into your milk with the dim hope that somehow it will transform into chocolate milk. (Of course, this does not work -- the frosting bit will instead float and bob, like a lonely chocolate seahorse, in the paper milk carton.)

This recipe is close to any standard cupcake version you may have on hand, but it is infused with cream and then dipped in chocolate, which sounds like a lot of work, but it all goes pretty quickly.

Hostess Cupcakes

Makes 18 cupcakes

For the cupcakes and filling:

2 sticks salted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup natural cocoa powder, such as Hershey's Baking Cocoa
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup marshmallow fluff
1/3 cup salted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For the frosting and decoration:

1/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup bittersweet chocolate morsels
1 1/2 tablespoons salted butter, softened
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photo by James Ransom. Excerpted from the book Treat Yourself: 70 Classic Snacks You Loved as a Kid (and Still Love Today) by Jennifer Steinhauer. Reprinted by permission of Clarkson Potter Publishers. All rights reserved.