Hostess-ish Cupcakes

So, one of my favorite desserts is the cupcake, and one of my favorite cupcakes is the Hostess Cupcake from Crumbs Bakery (or as Sarah and I call it, Evil Crumbs -- long story involving some bad customer service, but we do love their cupcakes, so it is a conundrum). Anyway, since there is no Crumbs in Texas, Rebecca had to resort to making her own.

First, I made Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes from pages 215-216 of Baking From My Home to Yours. Just Google them to find the recipe. It is everywhere. I may have over baked them, as they were kind of dry, but they had a yummy chocolate flavor.

After cooling the cupcakes, I then filled them with this recipe that I found on Baking Bites:

Vanilla Cream Filling
3 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 cup milk (low fat is fine)
1/2 cup butter (or trans fat-free shortening)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 scraped vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk together the flour and milk and cook in a small saucepan over medium heat until thick. This will only take a few minutes. Sir continuously to prevent the mixture from clumping and do not bring all the way to a boil. When thickened (consistency will be that of a thin pudding or custard), strain with a mesh strainer into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let cool completely to room temperature.
When the milk mixture is cool, cream the butter (or shortening) and sugar together in a medium bowl until light. Add in the milk/flour mixture and the scraped vanilla bean seeds (or vanilla extract) and beat at high speed with an electric mixer for 7 minutes, until light and fluffy. Scrape into a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip, or a large ziplock bag with the corner cut off, and set aside until ready to fill your cupcakes.

In this case, I was afraid that it would not make enough icing, but it whipped up nicely. Also, I am not that good with the pastry bag, but every cupcake had filling. However, there was not enough left to make the Hostess squiggle. Next time, I would make 1.5 times the recipe.

After filling them, I glazed them with Dorie's recommended glaze. The glaze was much better at room temperature, than after I stored them in the fridge (I live in Texas, it gets hot here). After being in the fridge, the glaze was too hard for that true Hostess taste.

All in all, these were good cupcakes, but I am still searching for a way to replicate the Crumbs Hostess Cupcakes. The cake needs to be moister and the frosting needs to be...different somehow. Not sure yet. Let me know if you have any thoughts.