Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Yes....you read that correctly. I put chocolate chip cookie dough inside a cupcake. I know. I may have gone too far. But only (s)he who gone too far knows what is enough (or something like that). For me, I think I went too far and realized I could probably handle these better without cookie dough, but others seemed to love the cookie dough and since it is more of a novelty cake I may leave it in. Just for fun. I have to say though, the cake in the cupcakes is AMAZING. So much better than any plain cake (i.e. vanilla etc.) I've ever made. I love them!! When you hollow out the cupcake to make room for the cookie dough you're left with a little ball of cake like a donut hole and since I made about two dozen of these, I've been enjoying the cakes holes (?) all week long. The cake has a richness to it like a cookie would. A subtle molasses depth from all the brown sugar. The frosting too is rich and flavorful and anything but simple or plain. I was hesitant to make the frosting since it diverted so much from my buttercream but decided to stick with it and was the opposite of disappointed. It was brown sugary and thick, yet light and mousey. The frosting contains flour which is why I was resistant but I'm glad I gave it a try, I may start using it on a lot of things.

The recipe itself was pretty straightforward but a little involved. The author recommends making the cookie dough a day ahead but I ended up doing it all on the same night and it was fine. The cookie dough does need to refrigerate though, so plan accordingly. Once you've made the batter (which has a whopping 3 sticks of butter, even puts me to shame) and baked and cooled the cupcakes, you take a knife (I used a grapefruit knife and it worked beautifully) and carefully cut out a good round chunk for the cookie dough to sit just beneath the frosting. Take little chunks of cookie dough after it's chilled an roll in into roughly a ball and place in the hollowed out cupcake. After you've whipped up the frosting, you just pipe it on over the cookie dough and then add some mini chocolate chips to the top for decoration. Those mini chips were hard to find and after much searching I found them in the gluten free section....weird, but whatever, they worked.

Link to the recipe: http://sugarcooking.blogspot.com/2010/04/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cupcakes.html

A couple final thoughts about these cupcakes: 1. I don't think the actual cake needs the cup of chocolate chips. Even though only a couple chips end up making in to each cake, I found it a bit much with everything else that was going on. 2. If you try to make chocolate chip cookies from the cookie dough for a cute little decoration like the author did, they don't bake very well fyi. They are hard as a rock (because there are no eggs?) and burn easily. 3. Save the cake holes (?). Delicious. 4. The cookie dough is safe to eat because of the lack of eggs even though I've probably eaten my body weight in raw eggs over the course of my life...and I'm fine.

Here's the grapefruit knife I used. Worked so well since it's curved. Works well on grapefruit too I suppose. More of a reason to buy it.

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Photos by Collin Monda