Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Right before I uploaded a photo of the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes that I made today, I noticed that How To Eat A Cupcake posted about her chocolate chip cookie doughs that she recently made - talk about a coincidence!

Mine are slightly different that her cupcakes, however.  I used a very chocolatey cupcake recipe that I have used for many of my chocolate cupcakes - the recipe can be found here.  The cookie dough recipe that I used INSIDE the cupcakes was the recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House mini chocolate chip bag, and it can be found here.  To assemble the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes, have a read over this post; it basically follows the same assembly instructions.  I used homemade cookie dough instead of store-bought cookie dough, though, and rolled the dough into balls about 1/2" in diameter.  I froze them for a few hours before using them in the cupcakes.

For the cookie dough frosting, I used a safe-to-eat recipe without any eggs found at Mama Baker.  Even though I already have a good eggless cookie dough recipe, it wasn't as creamy as what Mama Baker's looked like in her photos, and this is why I chose her recipe.

My inside cookie dough fell to the very bottom of the cupcakes and flattened out; I haven't had this happen before with my cookie dough cupcakes and I used the same cupcake recipe, so it must be the cookie dough itself.  I didn't photograph the cookie dough inside the cupcake just because it wasn't too attractive.  But I can assure you that these cupcakes are chocolatey, rich and sinful.  It will not be the last time I use chocolate chip cookie dough as frosting!

Cupcakes Are Coming

This past week I haven't had a lot of sweets, but I have enjoyed trying out some other new recipes that I've been craving for lunch and dinner.  For example, this simple chicken and salad wrap really hit the spot the other day.

All it is is a whole wheat tortilla, romaine lettuce, grilled chicken strips (these can be purchased frozen and pre-cooked, to be reheated in the microwave) and a few drips of tomato & herb based salad dressing.  Simple, healthy and tasty!

The other recipe I cooked up was very nice as well.  It is super easy and can be made in one pot.  All it is is chicken breasts, stewed tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms and oregeno.

I would have liked to have served this with plain white or brown rice, but I didn't have any.  I served it with peas instead.  My 18-month-old son loved this and ate every single last crumb of this.  I was so pleased because this is a boy who loves his french fries and chicken nuggets, so when he eats any kind of vegetable it is something to write about!  My 3-year-old daughter, however, would have nothing of it!

I forget where I got this recipe, it was just printed out in Notepad and stuck in my recipe book, so I'll post it here in case anyone else is interested in trying this as well.

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, about 1 1/2 pounds

Coarse salt and ground pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound mushrooms, trimmed and quartered

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 can (14.5 ounces) stewed tomatoes

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

Preparation

Season chicken with salt and pepper. In a large (5-quart) saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, heat oil over medium-high heat; swirl to coat bottom of pan. Cook chicken, turning when it easily releases from the pan, until golden, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Add mushrooms; cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, tomatoes, and oregano. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until tomatoes have broken down, 10 to 15 minutes.

Return chicken and any accumulated juices to pan; cover, and cook until chicken is opaque throughout, 4 to 6 minutes. Turn chicken to coat with sauce, and serve.

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I was not able to enter Iron Cupcake: Earth this month because I have simply not had time to go on a search for necessary ingredients.  The only time that I did have a chance, I couldn't find one of the main ingredients that I needed!  This is the first challenge that I have missed, but I do eventually intend to make the wine cupcake that I wanted to make for January's challenge.

And just as a heads up, coming up later in the week are chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes.  Chocolate chip cookie dough baked inside chocolate cupcakes, and frosted with raw (eggless) chocolate chip cookie dough!  Yum!  I can't wait to taste these!

Crumb Cupcakes

To be honest, I haven't really been craving sweet stuff lately.  This is another reason that posting here has been slow over the past month.  I found out on Christmas morning that I'm pregnant with our third child; I had the first ultrasound this past Thursday and I am currently 9 weeks along.  The due date is August 23, and I think baby #3 will be a girl!

Anyway, I have been craving savory stuff, rather than sweets.  When it comes to cupcakes at the moment, frosting makes me feel queasy.  Remembering a few recipes in the book Cupcakes! that do not use frosting, I decided to try one out today and they really hit the spot.

Crumb cupcakes!  They remind me of those Hostess crumb cakes, although this particular cupcake has a much crunchier top.  While I used the recipe for the crumbs, I could not use the recipe for the yellow cake because I did not have all the listed ingredients.  To substitute, I chose Bakerella's moist yellow cake recipe, and it did live up to its name!  It's a great yellow cake, one that I will now use time and time again when I need a yellow cake.  Very soft, very moist.

I don't have two cupcake pans, so I used leftover cake batter and crumbs in a loaf pan to bake at the same time as the cupcakes, so I ended up with a little crumb loaf.

I sliced an end off and stuck it on top so you could see how beautiful that yellow cake is.

I don't feel comfortable posting the recipe for these cupcakes (except of course for linking to Bakerella's yellow cake recipe) because it came from a cookbook, and while apparently it is not illegal to post the actual recipe, I would just rather not.  Go grab the book if you're interested, or I'm sure you can find another similiar crumb cupcake recipe by searching online.

Update next day:  These crumb cupcakes are fantastic reheated in the microwave for breakfast!  I would definitely make these again, but next time I will not put crumbs on the bottom of the cupcakes; the crumbs are crunchier on the bottom than on the top, and I personally don't like that crunch.  I'll just put extra crumbs on top!

I'm not sure how things are going to be, cupcake-wise, for a while, since I'd much rather eat an entire bag of something like sour cream & onion potato chips, but I'll try to update with cupcakes a bit more than what I have, even if I have to pawn them off to neighbors!

For anyone wondering about my Iron Cupcake: Earth prizes, I haven't yet received them all.  Once I receive everything I'll post pictures of them in one big post.

Updates!

I haven't posted much lately, but I did want to let you know that our oven was fixed on Friday afternoon.  I made a quick batch of cupcakes on Saturday but wasn't too pleased with them and didn't think they were worthy enough to be posted here!  I'm going to participate in Iron Cupcake: Earth's wine challenge within the next week or two.  I have a recipe for it that I planned out on the very day that January's challenge ingredient was announced, and it sounds very yummy, so I can't wait to create that.

I have been receiving my Iron Cupcake: Earth prizes; I have received 3 so far.  Once all the prizes are here I'll post photos of everything so you can see how awesome they all are, and hopefully they'll tempt more people to enter so they too can have a chance to win these prizes.

Iron Cupcake: Earth Win!

I am completely over the moon for being the winner of this month's Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge, Chocolate With A Twist.  My entry was my matcha cocoa cupcake, which was very tasty.  My favorite part of my entry was the matcha Swiss meringue buttercream!

Check out the official post at No One Puts Cupcake In A Corner to see my winning entry and that amazing list of prizes that I will be receiving!

Thank you to everyone who voted for me!  :)

No Bake Cookies

Due to our recent oven failure, I cannot bake anything at all until the heating element is replaced.  But I needed something sweet to eat, so I chose the chocolate peanut butter no-bake cookie.  I hadn't eaten one of these since I was in about third grade at my babysitter's house, so I was thinking that the taste of these would bring back many memories, and they did!

The chewy, chocolatey, peanut buttery taste of these cookies instantly brought back memories with the very first bite.  They were super easy to make too, so I'm not sure why I've never made these before.  Definitely these were the quickest cookies I've ever made!

I halved the recipe from the original and ended up with about 2 dozen, maybe a few more.

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups old fashioned or quick cooking oats

Method

In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly, then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the tablespoonfuls, until cooled and hardened, about an hour.

They, of course, remain soft and pliable and chewy; which is not exactly like a normal baked cookie.  But they are quite tasty and I would make these again say, if I wanted a super quick sweet treat or if the oven didn't work...  :)

Oven Failure

I recently talked about how a recent string of my cupcake failures was explained by baking powder that was expired by 3 months.  That was just Part I of my problem.  For the past couple of weeks I've noticed a bright spot on our oven's heating element, but not knowing anything about ovens I disregarded this warning sign.

I did get new baking powder, and was anxious to try it out.  Little did I know that that day I used my new baking powder was also the day the oven's heating element would konk out.  I chose the sour cream chocolate cupcake recipe from the book Cupcakes!, which was a Christmas present.  I put them in the oven for 20 minutes, took them out at 20 minutes, but they instantly started to fall and eventually sank, creating a huge crater in the middle of each cupcake.  They weren't done, I realized.  And I was confused by this.

I was, however, positive that the baking powder worked - even though the cupcakes were not totally done, they were soft, moist and tasted very taste, unlike my previous ones made with the old baking powder, which were flat, short, tasteless and rubbery.  I dusted the cupcakes with confectioners' sugar and ate them as is.

Later, I searched online for what a bright spot on the oven's heating element could mean.  I found out that it meant that the heating element was about ready to konk out; a bright spot on the element would mean uneven and improper heating.  So this explains it!

For dinner that night, my daughter wanted pizza.  I preheated the oven and went away for a while to let it heat up.  A few minutes later I was back in the kitchen for some reason or other and saw sparks, lots of sparks!, shooting out of the heating element in the oven.  Luckily the sparks died when I turned the oven off.

So now I just need to wait until we can get the heating element replaced, and then I believe I will be back in business.  Stay tuned though, as I made those chocolate/oatmeal/peanut butter no-bake cookies (since we obviously can't use the oven) and will be posting info, recipes and photos about them.