Shaking it Up with a ‘Sweet’ New Skill

I LOVE learning new things. The challenge excites me and the knowledge stimulates me. Over the last few weeks I have been pushing myself to make things from scratch.  Last week I made salted caramel cupcakes filled with homemade caramel and topped with a salted caramel butter cream frosting. These were delicious, however next time I will use unsalted butter to keep a sweet and salty balance. I also made fresh marinara sauce and garlic bread this week ( Garden Marinara via Samsung Galaxy  ). There is something satisfying about taking your time and knowing everything that was added to your dish.

Now I don’t have time to do everything from scratch all the time, nor do I have the desire to, but it is a fun activity and treat when I do. I love the sense of accomplishment and the yummy reward at the end of my hard work.

This weekend I decided to try my hand at cookie dough cupcakes filled with egg-less cookie dough and topped with a cookie dough buttercream frosting. I love cookie dough anything and it looked good on handy-dandy Pinterest.

So my adventure began with  printing out the directions because I am a fan of reading, re-reading and triple checking what I am doing while cooking. Probably because I usually have music going and a glass of wine in my hand…but to each their own right?

I pulled out all the ingredients to get them to be room temperature (cupcake tip #1) and came back after a little while to begin. I did pull out my camera to take a few pictures since I have not had time to play with my Nikon in a while.

The cupcake batter looked just like cookie dough prior to adding the dry ingredients and then became silky smooth. I sifted my flour (cupcake tip #2) even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I feel like it makes the cupcakes lighter and less dense.

While those were baking I made the filling – a double batch – and tossed it in the fridge (after sampling of course) to chill. I feel like mentioning a double batch is important. My reasoning being that if your kitchen is already a mess and the ingredients are out, why not make extra and freeze the dough for a snack or ice cream topper? Then when you are wanting cookie dough and have no motivation to bake you can slide open the freezer drawer and be rewarded for your hard work!

Once I let the cupcakes chill on the wire rack for an hour I removed their middles and gently slid some chilled cookie dough in the middle and replaced the top of the cut out. By replacing the top smooth portion of the cupcake you removed it will make the frosting sit nicer on the almost even surface (cupcake tip #3).

The frosting was made last, stuffed into a piping bag and swirled on top. Piping is a lot of work and hard. Well not hard if you don’t care how it looks…but for those out there who do care….I have newfound respect for bakers who make beautiful designs from frosting. A few mini chips were used for decoration and BAM dinner – I mean dessert was served.

Since I was expecting the recipe to make 12-14 cupcakes like normal batches and it made 30 (should have been 24, but I didn’t know how much they would rise), I decided to share a few with some friends and family. I suppose I could have read the whole recipe and noticed the number of servings or cupcakes before starting…but where is the fun in that? Plus this way I get to share the love!

These turned out fantastic! So good that I cannot honestly say how much I ate of each ingredient while making them or the final product. I will definitely be making these again!

Here is the link to the recipe from Tidy Mom ( https://tidymom.net/2011/cookie-dough-cupcakes-with-cookie-dough-frosting-recipe/ )