DIY Meowcakes: Cookie Dough Cupcakes!

As you may have noticed, this isn't a blog where I share recipes. There's a couple of reasons for this...

Firstly, the recipes I use are my own creations. They took months to perfect to the point where people bite into a cupcake and immediately say "Oh My God."  So I'm a little like a protective mother about them. No, it's not in the spirit of food blogging at all. No, I don't reeeally care. Secondly, there are so many fantastic blogs out there posting great recipes daily, if you want to recreate something you see here you can literally just google the flavours. One of my favourites is Sweetapolita, a beautiful page full of gorgeous photos, really great recipes, and helpful baking posts. 

Having said this...there are some things that need to be shared, and Cookie Dough Cupcakes is one of them. Whether you're a kid, a toothless geriatric, or a munchie-hungry university student, these are a guaranteed hit. They look like cupcakes, but really truly taste like chocolate chip cookie dough. The best part is, anyone can make them by adjusting recipes they already use! So here you go:

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

You will need:

- brown sugar

- ingredients for your favourite vanilla cake recipe

- mini chocolate chips

- ingredients for basic vanilla buttercream

~~~

1) Take your favourite vanilla cake recipe, and replace 1/2 to 2/3rds of the white granulated sugar with golden or brown sugar. As long as your recipe usually begins with creaming butter and sugar, it will work just fine. Spend an extra couple of minutes beating the butter and sugars together to make sure you get out any grittiness from the brown sugar. Brown sugar is what makes homemade chocolate chip cookies chewy and delicious, so by replacing some of the sugar in your  cake batter with it, the cake itself will have a similar taste.

2) Prepare the rest of your recipe as usual, and stir in mini chocolate chips. A batch of twelve cupcakes will need about half a cup of chips, but this is pretty much to your taste. I like the mini chips because I find large chocolate chunks too much for a cupcake, but again this is totally your call. Bake your cupcakes as usual.

3) While your cupcakes are cooling, you can prepare the buttercream. Start whipping about a cup of room temperature butter with half a cup of brown sugar. Beat for about 4 minutes until the brown sugar is well incorporated, then gradually add another 2 cups of icing sugar. Add milk by the tablespoon as needed, and beat until you have something that looks like frosting. Stir in a big teaspoon of vanilla extract, and then beat in a third of a cup of flour and half a teaspoon of salt. Flour in frosting sounds totally bizarre, but trust me- your frosting is going to taste like unbaked chocolate chip cookies.

4) At this point, you can choose whether or not you want to add chocolate chips to your frosting as well. I chopped dark chocolate super fine and folded it in, but you could just as easily drizzle chocolate on the finished cupcakes or cover them in chocolate sprinkles.

5) Ice your cooled cupcakes with the cookie dough buttercream and enjoy! 

Whoever you're baking for, these won't last long!