chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes

When I started to bake a couple of months ago, I decided to plunge in feet first with everything from scratch and complicated recipes. These cupcakes were my first challenge, and oh my god they are absolutely delicious, although the actual cake part of the cupcake turned out a bit dry. Next time, I'm going to bake each pan one at a time with another pan full of water underneath it to hopefully moisten up the cake.
The frosting is the most delicious icing I've ever had in my entire life - I'm going to make it all the time, now. And this recipe is great if you have a large crowd because there is usually left-over cookie dough with which to make delicious cookies (or just eat the cookie dough straight)!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Ingredients

Your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough: (my recipe is below)

Rolled into 24 1-inch balls and frozen

Yellow cake recipe

· 2 ¾ cup cake flour

· 2 ½ tsp. baking powder

· 1 tsp. salt

· 1 ½ cup sugar

· ½ cup butter, softened

· 2 eggs, at room temperature

· 1 ½ tsp. vanilla

· 1 ¼ cup milk

Cookie dough frosting

· 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

· ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed

· 3 ½ cups powdered sugar

· 1 cup all-purpose flour

· ¾ tsp. salt
3 Tbsp milk

· 2 ½ tsp. vanilla

· Mini chocolate chips

Procedure

For the cupcakes:

1. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

2. In your mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

3. Add in the eggs, one at a time, along with the vanilla. Mix well.

4. Add the flour mix alternately with the milk beating until you have a smooth batter.

5. Divide into 24 baking cups.

6. Insert frozen cookie dough balls into the center of the cupcake batter.

7. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, until the cake springs back when touched.

For the frosting:

1. Cream together butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Mix in the powdered sugar until smooth.

3. Add the flour and salt.

4. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and well blended.

5. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and top with mini chocolate chips.

Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Ingredients

· ¼ cup white sugar

· ¾ cup brown sugar

· 1 stick salted butter

· ½ stick (1/2 cup) butter flavored Crisco shortening

· 1 (3.5 oz.) box vanilla pudding

· 2 eggs

· 1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract

· 1 tsp. baking soda

· 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

· 1 pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

To make cookie dough:

1. Partially melt butter.

2. Cream butter, shortening, and sugars together.

3. Add pudding mix and eggs.

4. Incorporate flour and baking soda-mix well.

5. Fold in chocolate chips.

6. Place by rounded tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheet.

To make cookies: (if you have leftover cookie dough!)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Make cookie dough.

3. Evenly space cookies on the sheet. (These cookies should not spread much so fill up your cookie sheet.)

4. Bake 10 minutes at 375 degrees - as soon as you start to see light brown on the edges, take them out.

5. Remove from rack to cool.

the difference between the stove and the oven

At the beginning of this summer, I didn't know the difference between the stove and the oven. I'm the youngest in my family by a lot; my brother is twelve years older than me, and my sister is older than me by nine and a half years. Combine my youth with my traditional Southern cook of a mother, and I was never really needed nor desired in the kitchen growing up. And truth be told, I never had any interest in the kitchen. The mixing, the timing, the tasting, the boiling - none of it appealed to me at all until a few months ago.
At the beginning of this summer, I realized I wasn't going to have much to do this summer. The first three weeks of my summer break were spent in Peru, which was amazing yet left me returning to the States with few available jobs on the market. Right after I came back from Peru, my boyfriend left to go be awesome and study in Europe for two months, and my best friends got jobs. Bored and alone, I decided to finally begin some of the projects I'd been talking about for so long yet hadn't actually accomplished anything - I was going to start running, and I was going to learn how to bake.
Surprisingly, I fell in love with all that mixing and measuring and (especially) tasting. The pride I feel when I make something delicious completely from scratch is practically addictive; I can't get enough.
Over the past couple of months, I've found some fabulous recipes on my StumbleUpon account, and I thought I'd share them on the interwebs. So here you go! Happy baking!