Cookie Dough Cupcakes (aka I am SOOO over baking.)



My inability to rotate this picture is similiar to my inability to
produce quality baked goods in my kitchen.

 I've decided that I am doing too much in life lately.... a lot of everything, but nothing really well.  I.e. I can't, for the life of me, get the photos in this blog to rotate today.  Nor can I ever get baking just right either.  I always think I have it down or I have done my research on how to perfect something and it never turns out.  I've had a weee bit of a sweet tooth lately and reading food blogs isn't helping curb that craving in the least bit.  I've seen a bunch of recipes lately for Cookie Dough Cupcakes and I've been thinking about them day in, day out. 

I mean, cookie dough?  Cupcakes?  FROSTING?  Heaven Help Me.  Who dreamt up such a glorious recipe?   The premise is that you take eggless cookie dough, freeze it in balls and drop it into cupcakes before baking.  The cupcakes rise around the cookie dough and when they are done, you bite into the cupcakes and are met with a cookie dough surprise. Almost sounds better than sexy time to me. 

Yeah.  I said it.  I really, really love cookie dough.


Separate batch of cookies
Awful glutton free cookie experiment gone wrong.
Recipe followed to a T.
Red flag #2



I needed a reason to make them and a co-workers birthday was just the excuse.  Due to the freezing of the eggless cookie dough, this is a two night process.

The first night, I whipped up the cookie dough and froze into tablespoon sized balls.  The problem was, once I made it and rolled it up, I realized that the brown sugar was sitting unopened on the counter still.  Which means, despite a recipe that heavily called for it, I had not put it into the recipe.  This was my first baking red flag of the night.  However, I just dumped the necessary sugar into a bowl and took all the cookie dough balls and mixed it all back up. Still tasted like cookie dough to me, so all good.  Fail avoided.

The next night, I got to work on the cupcake batter.  I then spooned the batter into the bottom 1/3's of the cupcake liners.  I then placed a frozen cookie dough ball on the batter and into the oven at 350 they went.  My first batch was a test batch of six cupcakes. 

Which turned out really lucky for me.  I went into the living room to watch an episode of Mad Love and promptly fell asleep on the couch for the next two hours.

With cupcakes, in the oven, at 350 degrees. 

The B's could have played hockey with these overbaked pucks.

Total failure.

But I persevered, as any baker would do, and I continued making cupcakes until 3 am.  I sampled my little heart through every batch and ate enough frosting to give me a sugar high for the next three weeks.  These don't look anything like the amazing ones I have seen around the web, here and here and esp more here.... but in the end, they turned out okay.  I even shared one with a man.  A man I sort of want to impress.  A man who is apparently a glutton for punishment, because he keeps calling.  Which might be sort of tied to my fabulous personality and my perfected white wine mushroom risotto and caramelized sea scallops.  Obviously.

Anyways, my baking days are over.  I would much rather pay $3 a cupcake at Sweet or any local bakery than stress over something I wasn't born to do.  Cooking is my thing.  Baking?  Well, I am breaking up with you baking. We're through.

But, you should make these cupcakes using any one of the recipes I have linked to in this post!  They are tasty treats and there's no way you can fare as poorly as I did.  Even if you do, we're still talking about frosting, cookie dough and cupcakes... how bad can they be? 

Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes

These were really awesome. I brought these to Easter, and it seemed like people really enjoyed them.

Also, the peanut butter frosting could be used on many different plain cupcakes.

I slightly modified the Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcake recipe from My Baking Addiction.

Cupcake Ingredients
2 1/4 cup cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 T baking powder
4 large egg whites (at room temp)
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (at room temp)
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter (at room temp)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Jelly (I used grape.)

Combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites and buttermilk.

In a standing mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Then, add the vanilla. Slowly add a third of the dry mixture while beating at medium speed. Add half of the egg/buttermilk, a third of the dry mixture, the last of the egg/buttermilk, and finally, the last of the dry ingredients. Beat for a few more minutes until the batter is consistent throughout.Start putting the mixture in paper cupcake liners. I made 20 cupcakes.

Bake for 20-22 minutes at 350. Cool.

Now comes a fun part. I was able to use my apple corer that I got from my friend Amanda to create a space for the jelly filling. It's up to you to decide how much space you'd like to make for the jelly filling. After creating the space, add the jelly to each cupcake.


Frosting Ingredients
1 cup of peanut butter
3 sticks of butter (at room temp)
2 lbs powdered sugar
8 T heavy cream
2 T vanilla extract


To make the frosting, cream the peanut butter and butter in a standing mixer on medium speed. Switch to low speed, and add the powdered sugar while blending. Add the heavy cream and vanilla. Mix on high speed until the frosting is smooth and evenly blended.

I used a plastic bag to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes because that's how I roll, but if you have all of the proper frosting tools, use those. Make sure that the cupcakes are cooled before adding the frosting.


After the cupcakes have been frosted, add a drop of jelly to each cupcake.

This recipe makes a lot of frosting, and I have a lot left over. Maybe I didn't put enough on each cupcake, but I regret that I didn't have other plain cupcakes on hand. This frosting would be awesome on lots of other cupcakes. Taste it, and you'll see.

Just in case you're wondering..

Cupcakes won.