New Moon

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I love to cook and I love to bake, but my favorite thing to bake by far are cupcakes.  I don't know what it is, but I love everything about making them.  Funny thing is, I don't even like cupcakes.  I don't like cake, I don't like brownies, I don't like cupcakes.  I consider it a good thing that I don't like them because for how often I make cupcakes, if I actually ate them I would gain a whole lot of weight.

Something else that you should know is that I am not a professional baker, this isn't something that I do every chance that I get, it is just something that I enjoy doing.  Like a hobby.  So the pictures aren't professionally done either.  Whenever you look at food blogs, whatever is made looks flawless and the pictures are impeccable, we do what we can here and it works for me. 

So as I  mentioned in the post before this one, one of my best friends left on her mission this week, yesterday to be exact.  So this past Sunday was her farewell along with her little brother Derek's farewell.  (He is leaving for London, England next Wednesday) So I decided to make some cupcakes for the lunch after church.  I was going through a bunch of ideas that I had seen on other food blogs trying to decide what new recipe that I wanted to try and I decided on doing cookie dough cupcakes.  What is better then cookie dough inside of a cupcake??  Beats me. 

Ingredients:
1 box of Devils Food Cake
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. butter flavored shortening
1 1/8 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Start by making the cookie dough, the amazing recipe that I have says it needs to sit for an hour or two, but I have no idea why, I just follow instructions.  Oh and I ALWAYS double this cookie dough recipe.  You will need dough to put some in the cupcake, to make the little cookie garnishes you put on top and to eat as you bake of course!
1. Beat together the shortening, butter, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the egg and vanilla extract, beating until combined.
2. In a separate bowl, sift together the salt, baking powder, and flour, then gradually stir them into the batter. Stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Put in the fridge and let sit for an hour, unless you want to test it without chilling, if you do please let me know I am curious if it matters or not.

While the cookie dough chills, grab  your box of Devils Food Cake and do as the instructions say.  Let me tell you what I think about cake boxes....THEY ARE FANTASTIC!  For those of us who aren't great bakers, it saves a whole lot of time and confusion as well as the chance you might mess up, so I go with a box cake any chance that I can.

After the dough has chilled and the cupcake batter is made something that I find useful when putting the batter in cupcake tins is dumping all of the batter into a gallon zip lock bag.  Seal it up then cut one of the corners of the bag off, it helps control where the batter goes as well as helps with spills.

Fill the cupcake tin so the bottom is covered, don't fill much past that.  After you have done that, roll the cookie dough into balls as big as dimes.  You can make them bigger or smaller, depending on your preference.  After you have put a ball of cookie dough in, grab the rest of your batter and cover the cookie dough ball.  Be sure the whole ball is covered!  Fill to about 3/4 of the cupcake tin.

Look at the instructions on the cake box and bake.  Leave them in until you can put a fork in them and pull them out without anything on it.

What you can get ready next since you have the cookie dough out you can make the cute little cookie garnishes that go on top of the cupcakes.  Roll about the same size as you put in your cupcakes, maybe even smaller.  Bake in the oven at 350 for 6-7 minutes.  They may not look all of the way done, but remember the cookies will still continue to cook a little bit as they cook on the pan they cooked on.

While those bake you can make the frosting.  The frosting that I use on these cupcakes, and most all of my cupcakes if we are being honest is cream cheese frosting.  It is heavenly.  So even though I don't eat cupcakes, I eat a lot of the frosting...mmmmm. 

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
2 sticks of butter
1 8oz box of cream cheese
6 cups of powdered sugar.
1/2 Tsp of vanilla

1. Be sure that the butter and cream cheese are at room temperature.  If they are cold DO NOT put them in the microwave.  Well I guess you can if you watch them carefully and do it for a few seconds at a time.  You don't want either of them to get runny at all, it will ruin the consistency of the frosting.
2. Mix together in a medium size bowl the butter and cream cheese.
3. Add in one cup at a time the 6 cups of powdered sugar.  If you are like me  you always make a mess, and this is where it comes in.  Wear an apron if you have one!
4. Mix in the vanilla

After the cupcakes have cooled off, time to frost.  I use a big frosting head that I bought from Spoons and Spice which is so nice to have.  I highly reccomend getting one, it makes your cupcakes so much prettier.  If you don't want to buy one, don't have money or don't have time to get one, you can use your trusty gallon zip lock bags again.  Fill the frosting in and cut off a corner then swirl.

After you are done frosting add your cute baby cookies that you made for the finishing touches.  Depending on the size they turn out to be, you can either put the full cookie on or cut it in half.  Mine were too big, so I cut them in half and put them in.  Another thing that I think would be cute to add would be to buy mini chocolate chips and add a few of them after you have put the cookie on for more decorations.




Enjoy!

No comments:

Post a Comment