Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes.

A couple of days ago I was sitting at home deciding what do I send in for the office meeting. I had been away 15 days prior, on holiday in Switzerland, and this would be the first offering since my return. I decided to go with a classic and make old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies. I mean c’mon … everybody loves choco chip cookies. So I began to trawl the net looking for a nice recipe and I chanced upon a recipe for chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes. I thought to myself, “How odd? It sounds nice but would uncooked cookie dough go well on a cupcake?” So I went ahead and watched the youtube video and it looked pretty cool. The real test would be making them myself.

The ingredients list was not fancy; the usual stuff in my pantry sufficed. Now, in the video the Crumb Boss used a regular vanilla cupcake as her base, but for some reason I really really wanted chocolate chip cupcakes. So that’s what I made. If you feel that using a choco chip cake base AND a choco chip frosting is a wee bit too much, then by all means just go with vanilla sponge cupcakes, coz honestly, its the frosting that makes this recipe shine.

The Cake:

• 250 g plain all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 200 mls fresh whole milk, room temp
• 1 tbsp vinager (or 2 tbsp natural yoghurt or sour cream)
• 2 whole eggs , room temp
• 230 g butter, soft
• 150 g brown sugar
• 140 g white sugar
• 100 g chocolate chips
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract1. Oven gets preheated to 190°C. Cupcake tins get lined and ready.2. Now cream the butter in a stand mixer until light and fluffy. Then all both sugars. Scrape down the bowl from time to time to get everything mixed in well.3. Add the vanilla. Wait a while then add the eggs one at a time.

  4. Add in the milk and vinager (or sour cream / yoghurt). I personally did not add in all the liquid in one go because from experience there will sometimes be the need to hold back a little, otherwise you will wind up with pancake batter rather than cake batter. A good practice would be to alternate the wet and dry ingredients and go from there.

  5. Mix the dry ingredients together and pour half the flour into the cake mixer. The other half should be mixed with the chocolate chips to coat them. In cake batter, the flour helps the chips stay well distributed instead of sinking to the bottom of the cupcake cases. Now add this in with the rest of the cake mix.

  6. Adjust your liquid amount one final time (you might need a splash more milk) and shut the machine off. DO NOT OVER MIX! If there is some dry flour left in the bowl just incorporate it lightly into the batter using a spatula. It is not necessary to get everything mixed in together; the bits of flour will melt.

  7. Fill your cupcake cases and bake for 10 – 13 minutes. Cool completely on wire racks (or have a sneaky taste … or three). These cakes turned out really soft and fluffy. I could have quite happily eaten them on their own.

The Frosting :

The frosting is a two-part process. The first is to make a regular butter cream mixture. The second bit is to make an eggless cookie dough mixture. Regular cookie dough is fairly chunky and dense, but in order to incorporate in into the butter cream you will need to water it down with milk. No egg is used in this cookie dough so there is no risk of catching anything potentially dangerous from eating raw eggs.

• 125 g butter, soft
• 250 g powdered icing sugar
• 1 tsp clear vanilla extract.

I use clear vanilla here in order to keep the frosting as white as possible. Whisk all the above into a pale yellow – off white frosting. Then transfer to a bowl and get on with making the cookie dough mix.

• 125 g butter, soft.
• 50 g brown sugar
• 50 g white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 150 g plain flour
• 50 g chocolate chips
• 6 tbsp whole milk.

Cream the butter and sugars. Add the vanilla and milk. Then add the flour and choco chips to create your cookie dough. Tweak the amount of milk to achieve the correct consistancy; you may need all six tablespoons or more.

Now combine the cookie dough and buttercream to get your very yummy-liscious cookie dough frosting. I tell you this frosting was very hard to resist. Eating it straight out of the bowl was not something I had to think twice about. But with a little self-restraint you will be rewarded with an even yummier treat if you smear it on your cupcakes.

Combine plain vanilla buttercream with cookie dough mixture. Add crushed biscuits for texture.

As a garnish I crushed up some chocolate chip cookies and some digestive biscuits in a bowl. Then I pressed the crumbs onto the icing for texture, and it gives the frosting an even more authentic cookie flavour. As an alternative you can even pour the crushed up cookies directly into the frosting and use that to top your cupcakes directly. Break up chunks of cookies and place them on your cupcake to finish.

This frosting is loaded with chocolate chips, so if that is not your thing just use plain digestive biscuits as a garnish and omit the chocolate chip cookies. Experiment with the ingredients to what suits you best and have a little fun with it. Either way you are still going to be rewarded with a really decadent treat.

 ~ ENJOY! ~