Farewell Hostess

Did you grow up with Hostess stuff in the house?  I definitely did!  As I've said before.....my mom has never been much of a baker....so growing up I remember a lot of Hostess fruit pies (yuck), Twinkies (yum), chocolate cupcakes (yummer), and Ding-Dongs (yummiest!).  Well, with all the talk of the Hostess bakery closing, I couldn't stop thinking about making something Hostess.  I probably would have just gone to the grocery store and bought something, but apparently people decided to make a run on the stores and start selling everything on Ebay (seriously....you can buy Twinkies on Ebay....crazy!)......so, I decided to just do it myself!

I decided that I would make these as my kiddo dessert for Thanksgiving.....I mean, who doesn't love a chocolate cupcake??  Luckily I had saved a recipe for "Faux-stess" cupcakes from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen, and believe me.....these did not disappoint!  Every single one of them was devoured!

The best part for me (because I didn't have too much time to do these)?  The recipe uses a boxed Devil's Food cake mix!  Now, I normally would much rather make cupcakes from scratch....and there are some recipes for Faux-stess cupcakes that are from scratch......but I just decided to go with it, since I was under a time crunch.  Then you fill the cupcakes up with a vanilla frosting that I thought tasted a lot like the original.  "Only better", according to the hubby.

And then there's the top of the cupcake.  A can of chocolate frosting!  Seriously!  Did you know that you can nuke a can of frosting, then dip a cupcake in it and voila!  Easy peasy chocolate ganache?  I realize it's not the real deal....but come on!  It tastes just like it!  And it was exactly the right topping for these cupcakes!  Such a great trick to know.......I'll be using that again!

Check out Confessions of a Cookbook Queen for the recipe.....and Enjoy!  Now I've got to give homemade Ding-Dongs and Twinkies a try!