Roopa
It was my friend Joel’s birthday the other day, and I wanted to try something a little different. I’ve been in a bit of a baking rut these days, largely due to my lack of time. Between work, school, and volunteering, baking is low on the priority list; when I have to make something, I’ve been sticking to what’s familiar and easy! Granted, I still did that on these because I didn’t have thaat much time, but it’s still a step above normal.
These are vanilla cupcakes (although any cupcake would do) with raw mint chocolate chip cookie dough inside, and a mint chocolate icing. Basically, you freeze balls of cookie dough, and place them in your cupcake batter. Then when you bake them, the cookie dough merely thaws while the rest of the cupcake bakes. I was pretty happy with how they turned out! I didn’t actually eat any, but they got an excellent reception!
The icing caved in a little excessively on this particular cupcake (thus why it was relegated to being cut up), but you can kind of see the cookie dough inside!
I made the cookie dough balls a day before the cupcakes, since they’d be thoroughly frozen and ready to go. I also used an eggless/leavener-less recipe from www.sprinklebakes.com; I knew it wasn’t going to be baked, so no big deal.
I filled all of the cupcake liners about 2/3 full, and just dropped a frozen cookie dough ball at the very end. I did them once all of the liners had been filled, so that the dough could be as cold as possible entering the oven. The cupcakes came out a little collapsed, but I think that’s probably hard to avoid.
Another note: I definitely didn’t make quite enough icing. The last few cupcakes looked a bit pathetic. I didn’t want to overice, since the cookie dough was pretty sweet. The icing amount was definitely better suited to 16-18 cupcakes than 24.
COOKIE DOUGH*
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup flour
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 1/3 cup + 2 tbsp. packed brown sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup mint chocolate chips
- 2 tbsp. milk
DIRECTIONS
- Mix together the flour, salt, and sugars at a low speed.
- Add butter and vanilla to flour mixture, and mix until a dry dough is formed.
- Add mint chocolate chips to the dough, and mix at a low speed/ by hand until evenly dispersed.
- Add milk to mixture, and mix until combined
- Use a round spoon (I used a teaspoon because I made smaller cupcakes) to make cookie dough balls, and freeze
*There was a little jar of extra cookie dough after, but I don’t think that’s ever a bad thing. It came in handy a few days later!
It’s a pretty easy to work with cookie dough recipe.
The beautiful cookie dough balls!
VANILLA CUPCAKES (24 medium)
INGREDIENTS
- 1-¾ cups flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ½ tsp. salt
- 1 cup milk
- 3/8 cup oil
- 2 tbsp. apple sauce
- 2 tbsp. vanilla
- 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line cupcake tins.
- Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
- Mix milk, oil, apple sauce, vanilla, and apple cider vinegar together
- Combine wet and dry ingredients. Don’t overmix.
- Fill liners ~2/3 high.
- Drop a frozen cookie dough ball into each liner.
- Bake for 12 – 18 minutes, depending on liner size.
MINT CHOCOLATE ICING
INGREDIENTS
- ¼ cup (57 g) unsalted butter
- 1/3 heaping cup icing sugar
- ½ tsp. vanilla
- 50 g mint chocolate chips, melted
- pinch of salt
- 1 tbsp. milk
DIRECTIONS
- Beat butter on a low-medium speed until fluffy.
- Add icing sugar until well combined, and then add vanilla and salt.
- Melt chocolate and add to icing. Mix at medium speed until well mixed.
Chateau Gateau 