Hesitant, Hopeful

Yesterday, I baked!  My friend Mayren linked me an amazing recipe, via facebook, that I just had to try -- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes from kevin & amanda {blog}!! Sounds good, doesn't it?  Trust me, it is!!  I found it to be a fair bit of work, especially since I made all the parts from scratch, but the result was well worth the work.

So, rather than re-typing the recipe (link above), I'm going to share my pics with you instead! Pics are the fun part, anyway!!

First things first, her recipe for chocolate chip cookie dough is the best I have ever had/made. It's amazing!!  The texture, the taste, everything about it is fantastic, it's not sticky like cookie dough tends to be, nor is it dry and crumbly; it's perfect!!  The recipe calls for no eggs, but instead uses milk. I am definitely making this chocolate chip cookie dough recipe next time I make cookies!

 Look at those perfect little dough balls -- scooped with a 1.5 tbsp cookie scoop!!  Oh man, do I love it... which reminds me, I still have some in the freezer!!  The recipe is supposed to make 24 cupcakes, but the cookie dough part of the recipe made more like 40, so I have left overs.

The recipe on kevinandamanda.com says to freeze the cookie dough overnight, but I'm impatient.  I froze it for about 3 hours, which was more than enough.  If you're going to try this, and you're less impatient, go ahead and freeze them overnight, can't hurt!

I also made the cupcake dough from scratch, which is not something I'm prone to doing, but I was feeling adventurous.  I think next time, I'll just use a golden vanilla box cake mix, it might be that it comes out a little better that way.  I've discovered, over the years, that there are many things I can bake, but cakes from scratch are not one of them.

When the batter's made, you just pop the cookie dough on top and put them in the oven!  I had a little problem where the dough sank like it was supposed to, but the batter didn't cover it up, so it was concave in the center.  I don't know if it should be like that, or if it was my unfortunate cake baking skills that caused it.  Either way, I just covered up the holes with frosting, which turned out fine!


Most of mine didn't look this pretty, but a few of them did!!  The icing is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, too!! I started by piping the icing onto the cupcake using a ziploc bag with the corner cut off until I realized, quite suddenly, that that was using so much icing that I would have to make another batch to ice the rest of the cupcakes.  So, I went to the old fashioned, slather some icing on the cupcake method that leaves them looking less lovely, but tasting just as good!

These cupcakes are absolutely to. die. for!!

That said, I'm on the fence about whether I'll make them again in the future.  They're very, very sweet... almost too sweet.  I rarely say that, mostly because I've never eaten anything that I've felt that way about, but in this case it's true.  They're absolutely sinful!  They're also a heap of work, which might be mitigated by using a box cake mix, so I'm reserving judgement on that front.  Finally, as sweet as they are, 24+ cupcakes is a lot of cupcakes when I'm really the only one eating them -- Matt'll have one now and then, but he's not a huge fan of sweets.  So, I'm a bit torn about whether it's worth it given that I'm not able to eat so many.  I think, next time (assuming there is a next time), I may try them with chocolate cake!  That would be amazing!!

Next up, Brownie Batter Chocolate Cupcakes!  Of course, I won't be making them until I recuperate from the cookie dough-induced sugar trance these cupcakes have put me in!

Enjoy!

[ALL IMAGES REMOVED]