Experimental marshmallows

Most of the cakes I bake at the moment are experimental.  I rarely follow a recipe to the letter, and instead I use a basic sponge recipe and adapt it to what I feel like making.

Today was Raspberry & Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes.

As a starting point they're fine, but they need some work.  So here's what I did...

1. Substituted some of the sugar in the sponge recipe with raspberry jam
2. Pushed a marshmallow into the centre of the cake mix
3. Put a little dollop of jam on top of the marshmallow
4. Made sure the jam was fully covered with a little more cake mix before baking
5. After baking I placed another marshmallow on top of each cake then grilled them, watching constantly because they burn so quickly

This is the result after a messy addition of drizzled icing

The marshmallow inside the cake melted almost to nothing, so next time I'll leave that out.  Also, I'd originally planned to make marshmallow, pipe it on then toast it.  There were two drawbacks to this; I didn't have gelatin but I did have a big bag of pre-made marshmallows.  And it's Sunday.  And I was too lazy to go shopping.  Okay, so that's four drawbacks.

Next time I'll make the effort with home-made marshmallow, and instead of the jam in the cake mix (which didn't alter the taste much, but did make them nicely moist) I'll use fresh raspberries.

Next time they'll be perfection.

This time they really aren't perfection, but they're still cakey goodness!  I suspect there's a 9 yr old and a soon-to-be 7 yr old who'll gobble them up regardless of how they look!