Cookie Dough Cupcakes

A coworker of mine had mentioned cookie dough cupcakes to me a few months ago, and I thought they sounded fantastic. Fantastically yummy. And fantastically complicated. Surely, to get the taste of cookie dough IN a cupcake, you must have specials skills, tools, talents, ingredients, powers, right?

No.

I have none of the above (aside from the ability to roll my tongue, which some might consider a special talent). And I made them and will do so again and again.

I must be on a cookie dough kick this week. I made these for the birthday of one of Tim's coworkers. The actual cupcake part of this treat was the most moist thing I have ever eaten. It was amazingly easy to make these, and some people called it the best thing I have ever made, which is an observation I do not take lightly.

One of Tim's coworkers told me he microwaved one for a few seconds and it tasted exactly like a cupcake and cookie dough. As you'll see from my notes below, next time I make these I'm going to make some small modifications to have them be more "gooey cookie dough center" instead of "fairly baked cookie dough crust." People seemed to love the fact that they had NO IDEA there was cookie dough coming until they bit in to one.

Makes 22 to 24 cupcakes (2 1/2 inches each)
Preparation time: 15 Minutes
Baking time: 23 to 27 Minutes
Assembly time: 10 Minutes

Ingredients:

24 paper liners for cupcake pans (2 1/2-inch size)
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow cake mix
1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant pudding mix
1 cup whole milk
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 package (1 pound) frozen cookie dough (see "the Cupcake Doctor says" below)
Frosting (Cupcake Doctor recommends homemade chocolate buttercream, I used store-bought frosting)

Directions:

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners. Set the pans aside.

2. Place the cake mix, pudding mix, milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again if needed. The batter should look well blended. Spoon or scoop a heaping 1/4 cup batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it two thirds of the way full. (You will get between 22 and 24 cupcakes; remove the empty liners, if any.) Cut the frozen dough pieces in half to make 24 pieces. Place a frozen cookie dough piece on top of each cupcake (see "Kristin I. Cupcake Maker says" below). Place the pans in the oven.

3. Bake the cupcakes until they are golden and spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 23 to 27 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Run a dinner knife around the edges of the cupcake liners, lift the cupcakes up from the bottoms of the cups using the end of the knife, and pick them out of the cups carefully with your fingertips. Place them on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes before frosting. They may sink a bit in the center.


4. Frost and serve!

Store these cupcakes, in a cake saver or under a glass dome, at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Or freeze them, wrapped in aluminum foil or in a cake saver, for up to 6 months. Thaw the cupcakes overnight in the refrigerator before serving.

The Cupcake Doctor says...

If you use the 18-ounce logs of refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough (instead of the 1-pound packages of frozen dough), cut them into 24 equal pieces and freeze them before using them in this recipe. It's important to use frozen dough, because you don't want it to bake completely and become a cookie. You want the center to be gooey when you bite into it.

Kristin I. Cupcake Maker says ...

I used the 18-ounce log and froze it first. When I make these again, I am going to keep the pieces frozen til the last possible second. In the little time I needed to cut the frozen log, I think it defrosted just enough to start baking and become a cookie while in the cupcake. When I make them again, I'm going to push the piece of cupcake dough in to the cupcake because it seemed to just bake at the top instead of become a gooey ball inside of the cupcake. It made for a yummy cookie dough topping, but it wasn't the gooey center I was expecting.

Source: The Cake Mix Doctor