Cookie Dough Cupcakes, Man

I’ve inherited a lot of things from my mother – my love of shopping, my silly laughter, my even sillier sense of humor, my occasional vanity, my love for classic rock, Prince and Madonna – not least of all is my sweet tooth.

While my sweet tooth has been tame for the last couple of years, there’s no doubt that any time I’m presented with either an apple or a seven-layered chocolate cake I’m going to go with the cake. I’ve been known to dine lavishly on a three-course meal and then go for a slice of cookie cake at a local Great American Cookie Company. There’s donuts in the house? I think I’ll have one…two…all of them.

I was recently able to take some time off work and make it back to Kingsport for a few days to spend some time with mom and get a new tattoo (Will post later), so in honor of the event I thought I would bake up something special for us to chow down on before and after dinner.

My friend and occasional blog contributor (though she’s rarely aware of it) Allison shared with me her “Food” board on Pintrest a few weeks ago and I was drawn to one particular recipe that ended up being the perfect compliment to three days with mom: Cookie Dough Cupcakes.

These cupcakes are made with a nice Browned Butter Cupcake recipe and have tiny divots carved in to be filled with Eggless Cookie Dough, a great rendition of a treat everyone loves even when it’s technically unsafe to eat otherwise.

But these cupcakes didn’t stop there. No, no – they were then topped with a chocolate chip frosting. Dammit, man, let’s get to the process and photos!

Starting out with the cupcakes, I rounded up the ingredients*:

1) Butter
2) Flour**
3) Salt
4) Baking Powder
5) Baking Soda
6) Egg Whites
7) Sugar
8) Vanilla Extract
9) Milk

I began by browning the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. This didn’t take long as I was assembling other ingredients while the pan heated up and was very, very hot by the time I dropped the butter in. Within minutes the butter had melted down and had gone from bursting giant butter bubbles to very tiny bubbles with a distinctive brown color floating across the top. While browning the butter I mixed together all of the dry ingredients into a small bowl followed by all of the wet ingredients (save for the milk) in a large bowl. Once the butter had browned and cooled a little, I poured it in with the wet ingredients, then took turns alternately adding the dry ingredient mixture and the milk until everything was combined and formed a nice batter.

I lined a 12 cup muffin pan with liners and filled each roughly 3/4 full and baked about 20 minutes at 350*. Once removed, I used a paring knife to carve tiny holes in the center of each muffin and proceeded to eat all 12 remnants because I have no shame.

While the cupcakes were baking I rounded up the ingredients for the cookie dough*:

1) Milk
2) Salt
3) Flour**
4) Sugar
5) Chocolate Chips (I used Mini Semi-sweet)
6) Butter
7) Vanilla Extract
8) Brown Sugar

Making the cookie dough was one of the easiest parts of this process. One step: combine all ingredients and stir. Done.

One thing I did that ended up being a happy accident was adding my melted butter while it was hot – this made a lot of my chocolate chips melt which made my dough have a nice chocolatey appearance. This recipe makes quite a bit of dough, which is a good thing.

Once the cupcakes finished baking and the holes were cut out, I used a tablespoon to make round balls of cookie dough and dropped (well, actually sort of smashed) in the dough. For 12 cupcakes I used roughly half of the dough. I reserved one cup of dough for the frosting and the remainder went into a tupperware dish for late-night cookie dough attacks.

The final part was also surprisingly simple. I took the reserved cup of cookie dough and mixed with about a half cup of heavy cream until most of the dough was “spreadable” and creamy, then carefully topped the cupcakes with the frosting. This unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it) didn’t leave a lot left over. I sampled it and gave Erin a taste and just tossed the leftover, which was very, very little.

And that’s it – a little bit of effort, yes, but worth every minute of it. Mom was happy, I was happy, and we now have a small tub of raw cookie dough in the fridge – safe to eat, of course!