When Recipes Collide: Cupcakes & Cookie Dough

HAPPY FRIDAY!!! It’s finally here, friends, finally! I love and cherish my weekends as if they were my own little happy places, tucked away just for me, right in the nick of time. And with all the messy stuff going on in Japan, I’m (and I’m sure they are!) in need of that happy place. All of that tragedy just breaks my heart.

Alright, enough sad talk, it is time for recipes colliding!

It’s just powdered sugar, Silly’s.

There are things like song mashups, web application mashups, mashed potatoes (yeah, I don’t know..), and recipe mashups.

Sometimes mashups are wonderful, new, innovative creations. Sometimes they’re duds. And sometimes they’re really fun, tasty, and require a lot of baking time.

Case in point, sometimes when recipes collide, magic happens.

Take, for example, this cupcake.

It’s not quite your average cupcake. Either of them.

On the surface it just looks like a chocolate chip vanilla cupcake. But in the middle it’s beaming with peanut buttery chocolate chip cookie dough goodness. And on the top, it’s graced with a chocolate peanut butter frosting.

Recipe mashup? Tally one point for the cupcake.. Another point for the frosting, and peanut butter cookie dough, and happy tastebuds. And, mind you, these are neither healthy or sugar free… but they are gluten-free.

If we’re counting points here, I’m going to go ahead and add on about 12 just for taste in itself. These are SO GOOD. Oh, and it’s Friday. Another few points for that.

[gluten-free and filled with yum]

Recipe adapted from the Blue Eyed Baker. Makes 10 cupcakes + extra cookie dough

COOKIE DOUGH:

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Sugar in the Raw (or regular sugar)
• 1/4 cup gluten-free flour blend (or regular flour)
• 1/4 cup almond flour (or ground almonds or more GF flour)
• 3 tbsp almond milk (may need more if dough is still a little thick)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips (I used the mini Enjoy Life’s dairy-gluten-soy-free brand)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, taste test, and set aside.

CUPCAKE:

• 1 3/4 cups gluten-free flour blend (Bob’s Red Mill works well)
• 3/4 tbsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp Xanthan gum (if using GF flour)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup almond (or other) milk
• 1/2 stick butter, softened (I’m sickened by this amount to be completely honest… but it tastes good…)
• 3/4 cups Sugar in the Raw
• 2 large egg whites, room temperature
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips (again, Enjoy Life’s brand)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.

Combine flour, baking powder, Xanthan gum, and salt in a large bowl and set aside. In a small cup, stir the almond milk and vanilla together.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter on medium high speed until smooth.  Add the sugar beating until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk mixture.  Beat until just combined after each flour or milk addition. Add in chocolate chips, mixing briefly again.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form (I did this by hand and I never got peaks, so just fluffing them works fine).  Fold gently into the batter.

Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each 1/2 full, but reserving about 1/2 cup batter.  Place a small ball of cookie dough in the center of each cupcake. Cover the cookie dough with the remaining cupcake batter. Bake cupcakes for 18-20 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks.

Note: Alternately, you could do this last step a few different ways.

1. Cookie dough in the middle, covered with remaining batter, bake.
2. Cookie dough spread across the top of the cake batter, covering top of cupcake entirely.
3. No cookie dough, using it for the frosting, instead.
4. After done baking, mix and match tops if used cookie dough for baked top (like with #2 and the picture above the recipe).

FROSTING:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 heaping tbsp peanut butter (all I had was chunky, but smooth would work best)
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• water- added in 1 tsp increments

Mix all ingredients together until smooth and wonderful like frosting. Add water in 1 tbsp increments for mixing, if needed. Spread over your cooled cupcake masterpieces and enjoy.

These are rich, creamy, full of flavor, and sinful. Just the way cupcakes (and great women) were meant to be.

As you can tell I had a heyday taking photos of these. I LOVE my camera and taking pictures of food. Am I weird? Probably. Am I fun, definitely.

So, if you can’t tell from the pictures, we’ve got some different cupcake hats shown. Some with frosting, some with just the cookie dough baked on top, a cupcake topping the cupcake and frosting, a cookie dough top topping the frosted cupcake. I hope this proves that when recipes collide, magic happens.

What magic will you make happen this weekend?

Want more cupcake food porn? Click here!

Tagged as: chocolate, cupcakes, Dessert, food, peanut butter, Recipe