Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes, originally uploaded by bakingmonster.

Allright, let’s get it out of the way: these cupcakes were made of fail. Sure, they look good. But as for actually tasting anything like cookie dough, not so much.

It all started when Mr. Monster and I went to the restaurant supply store last weekend.  I had been asking (nagging) him to go for the last year, and since school is wrapped up for the year (yay!) and I have free time during the weekends again (double yay!), we finally went for a visit.  I had one goal: to find a 24-cup pan.  Yes, I have already several 12-cup pans.  Yes, I could just put two of them in the oven side by side like I’ve been doing.  But come on!  24 cups, now that means we’re in the big leagues.  And so we left the store with the 24-cup pan, a large cooling rack, and various other tidbits, me with a spring in my step and cupcakes on the brain.  I had to break in the pan, what should I make?

I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect cookie dough flavored frosting for awhile now.  Whenever I make cookies, I wind up eating what must be a cupful of the dough (much to Mr. Monster’s chagrin), and I wanted that same flavor in cupcake form.  And now was a perfect excuse to give it a whirl.  I decided to test a new recipe for vanilla cake and try a new technique for making the cookie dough buttercream.

Lesson 1: Don’t use a 24-cup pan on an untried recipe, unless you’re prepared to wind up with a whole bunch of crap.

For the cake recipe, I doubled the “Very Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cupcakes” from Julie Hasson’s 125 Best Cupcake Recipes.  For half the batch, I left out the chocolate chips, and for the other half I used mini chocolate chips.

I was a little disappointed with how the cake turned out.  The cake itself tasted too sweet to me, and the chocolate chips wound up sinking to the bottom of the cupcake.

Okay, so the cake turned out mediocre, but surely the amazing cookie dough frosting would make up for it, right?  Wrong-o.  I made my go-to vanilla buttercream, sans the vanilla extract, then made a half batch of Nestle Tollhouse cookie dough (sans the eggs) to mix into the buttercream.

Lesson 2: Don’t use random old dark brown sugar that has been in your cupboard for who knows how long.

Lesson 3: Don’t use Mexican vanilla as a key flavor when you’ve never tried it before and have no idea what it tastes like.

The cookie dough tasted a little funky to me, but I hoped that once it was mixed in with the buttercream and sprinkled with more mini chocolate chips, the flavor would mellow out.  Once it was all mixed together, however, it tasted like a grainy, faintly molasses-y, definitely non-cookie-dough-y buttercream.

And so I declared the numerous cupcakes (36!)  a failure and decided to pawn them off at work the next day.   The good thing about co-workers is that they’ll eat pretty much anything.  I even received positive feedback from the grazers, but I didn’t tell anyone what flavor the cupcakes were supposed to be when I abandoned them in the breakroom.  When I told them it was supposed to be chocolate chip cookie dough, they would say, “Oh.  Well, it was still good!”

The hunt for the perfect cookie dough cupcake continues…

Okay, so we started a blog and then promptly abandoned it for, oh, about a year.  We are naughty monsters!

But, we have been baking!

And we have proof.  Behold, a retrospective of what we have been too lazy to post:

I made miniature s’mores cupcakes:

(Recipe from Trophy Cupcakes, via Martha Stewart)

For Christmas I made an assortment of cupcakes (gingerbread, pink peppermint, and s’mores):

For the presidential inauguration, I made some red (velvet), white and blue cupcakes:

And for my second paying cupcake gig, I made miniature flower cupcakes for a co-worker’s daughter’s 3rd birthday:

And finally for Easter, some Peeps- and candy egg-topped cupcakes:

Mr. Monster also made some miniature cheesecakes for Easter as well, topped with blueberry and caramel sauces:

And we promise, we will be much better about documenting our concoctions in the future!

Knowing I am a chronic cupcake baker, the co-workers of both myself and Mr. Monster have become accustomed to being taste-testers of my attempts (experiments, failures). Thus, one day in January, Mr. Monster’s co-worker asked if I would be willing to make red velvet cupcakes for her son’s birthday. And the kicker: she would even pay me! My first paying cupcake gig, sweet.

The theme for the birthday was science (I saw the invitations she had hand-made to look like laboratory coats, really amazing and way craftier than I could ever be), so Mr. Monster and I went back and forth about how to top the cupcake. Lab coats? Beakers? It was a head-scratcher. Finally, Mr. Monster exclaimed “atom symbols” and we had a ta da moment.

I thought the best approach would be to have cupcake toppers on toothpicks, so I decided to make atom symbols using white chocolate. First, I printed out a page of large symbols and taped it to a baking sheet, then taped a piece of parchment paper on top.

The night before the birthday party, I melted white chocolate in the microwave and then used a ziploc bag with a corner snipped off to pipe the shapes. I followed the pattern I printed (for the most part) and stuck a toothpick at the bottom of each piece.   Once I filled the sheet, I popped it in the refrigerator to harden; then I oh so carefully removed each one from the parchment paper and placed all of them in a tupperware in the refrigerator for safekeeping.

The next morning I prepared the red velvet batter, based on a recipe from Paula Deen that I had tweaked a bit, and popped it in the oven. Eighteen minutes later, I had these babies:

While the cupcakes cooled, I made the cream cheese frosting, then placed it in the refrigerator to chill and reach a decent (ever elusive) piping consistency. Because I didn’t have a large round tip, I instead used a gallon ziploc bag with a large bit of the corner cut off, and I piped the frosting in swirls.

With the toppers added, our scientific experiment was complete. The funny thing was, once I put the topper on and looked at it, I realized, “They look like rounded star of Davids, oh noes!” Ah well, it worked on a couple of levels, since the birthday boy happened to be half-Jewish. Behold, one-of-a-kind red velvet atomic star of David cupcakes:

Red Velvet Cupcakes
(yields 24 cupcakes)

Dry Ingredients:
2 ½ c. (290g) cake flour
1 tbsp (5g) cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Wet Ingredients:
½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ c. vegetable oil
1 ½ c. (300g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 c. buttermilk, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp white vinegar
2 oz. red food coloring

In a medium bowl, sift together the cake flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda, mixing well using a whisk.

In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar together on medium speed, scraping down the bowl occasionally. Add the vegetable oil.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add the buttermilk, vanilla extract, white vinegar, and red food coloring and mix until well-integrated.

Add the dry ingredients and mix together just until combined.

Place liners in the muffin tin. Put in 1/3 c. batter in each liner (so the cup is 3/4 full). Bake for 13 minutes, rotate tins, and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until done (use a toothpick!). Leave the cupcakes in the tin for five minutes, then remove and let them cool on a baking rack.

Whenever I make this recipe, I always use both the buttermilk and vinegar since that’s what Ms. Deen does, although I think it’s a bit of an overkill. The buttermilk already has the tang and the acid you want; vinegar is typically used with regular milk as a substitute for buttermilk. So, I bet if you eliminated the vinegar from the recipe you couldn’t tell the difference. As a matter of fact, when I eat one of my red velvet cupcakes, I always detect an odd aftertaste which apparently only I seem to notice (given my delicate and refined palate, ha); I wouldn’t be surprised if the vinegar had something to do with it.

Cream Cheese Frosting

½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ lb (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
½ tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. (240 g) sifted confectioner’s sugar

In a mixer bowl, cream butter and cream cheese together, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla extract.

Add the sugar, about half a cup at a time, again scraping down the sides of the bowl. Refrigerate until frosting reaches piping consistency.

This is my standard cream cheese frosting, but I’m not especially pleased with how it holds up for piping, so I’m still searching for that perfect recipe. The snickerdoodle cupcake has a frosting that seems to hold up a bit better, due to the addition of white chocolate.

I stumbled upon this video a few days ago and it cracked me up.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if cupcakes were imbued with the breath of life? Have you ever imagined them in their little cake houses, coming home from a long day at work and eating a tv dinner while their miniature cupcakes squeal around them and battle for the remote? Um…no, of course I don’t do that either, I mean, that would be like totally weird, right?

Ah, my friends, but if they did, they surely would be as graceful as these waltzers:

It was on my very first trip to Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford a few days before Christmas 2007 that I had their snickerdoodle cupcake…and their red velvet, and their candy cane, and their snowball. Yes, that’s right, I had four cupcakes. It was all in the name of research, really! At the time, I was interested in comparing their red velvet to the recipe I had been using, and I decided to take home three others for the heck of it. My excuse was that Mr. Monster and I were having dinner with his sister and brother-in-law and maybe we could enjoy the cupcakes afterward, but somehow I was the only one that wound up actually sampling all four.

Anyhoo, back to the topic at hand: I tasted the Trophy’s snickerdoodle cupcake and declared it the best of the quartet (and denounced their red velvet as far inferior to my own, yay); the cake tasted exactly like a snickerdoodle cookie, complete with a cinnamon sugar crust, and the cinnamon buttercream finished the cake nicely. It stuck in my mind and several months later, I decided to try my hand at my own snickerdoodle cupcake. After doing my Google research and then baking several batches, here is the final recipe I arrived at:

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
(yields 12 cupcakes)

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. flour (180 g if using AP, 174 if using cake flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 c. butter, melted (1 stick)
1 1/4 c. granulated sugar (250 g)
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 almond extract
3/4 c. whole milk, room temperature (6 oz)

Grab a large bowl and dump in all the dry ingredients. Use a whisk to mix the ingredients thoroughly (particularly the baking powder) and get rid of any flour clumps.

In a small bowl, melt a stick of butter in the microwave, then pour in a mixer bowl with the granulated sugar and mix on medium to combine. The first time I made these cupcakes, I didn’t melt the better and the cupcakes had too fine a texture; the cupcakes would nearly fall apart. Melting the butter made for a denser cupcake.

Crack two eggs in a separate container (I use my handy Pyrex measuring cup); I do this in order to catch any egg shells that try to escape with the egg. Believe me, it’s a lot easier to fish the shell out of the Pyrex then it is to get it out of a bowl with other ingredients already in. With the mixer speed on medium, add the two eggs to the bowl.

Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well.

Grab your bowl of dry ingredients and put in about a third of it in the mixer bowl and combine at low speed. Scrape down the bowl and then add half the milk, again mixing at low speed. Scrape down the bowl again, and repeat with the next third of dry, the rest of the milk, then the last third of the dry.

Turn your oven on to 350 degrees. Grab your muffin tin, put in the muffin liners, and then fill each cup until 3/4 full. I like to use a large ice cream scoop for filling the cups.

Before you pop those babies in the oven, you want to sprinkle a cinnamon sugar mixture on the tops to give it that extra-snickerdoodle-y taste. I’ve tried several different ratios of granulated sugar to cinnamon but each time the cinnamon was too much. So, without having actually tried it yet, I’m going to tell you to use this mixture:

Cinnamon Sugar Topping
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Sprinkle the entire mixture evenly over the twelve cupcakes. Pop into the oven and bake for 18 minutes, turning the pan around after 13 minutes to help it bake evenly.

Take the cupcakes out and test with a toothpick for doneness. Okay, what does that mean? you may ask yourself. How on earth does a toothpick predict such a thing, is it magic? If you stick a toothpick in the center of a cupcake and batter clings to it when you pull it out, then it’s not done (surprise!). This has actually happened to me when I was certain a batch of cupcakes were done, so don’t skip this step unless you enjoy gooey cupcakes. If you pull the toothpick out and nothing, or just a wee bit of crumbs come out, then your cupcakes are good to go.

Leave the cupcakes in the tin for five minutes, then remove them and let them cool completely on a baker’s rack.

On to the frosting. Trophy’s cupcake was topped by a cinnamon buttercream, but I opted to use a cream cheese frosting flavored with cinnamon instead. I’ve been using cream cheese frosting for most of the other cupcakes I’ve made and I’ve been pleased with the flavor. I haven’t, however, been pleased with the consistency when I try to pipe it. It always turns out to be too soft unless I refrigerate it for a good couple of hours prior to piping. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the consistency. I had made a white chocolate cream cheese frosting around Christmas (what can I say, Christmas was primo cupcake time) and liked how well it had piped, so I figured I would try it again but use a lesser amount of white chocolate to avoid affecting the flavor.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
2 oz white chocolate, melted and cooled
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 c powdered sugar, sifted

In a small bowl, microwave the white chocolate for about 30 seconds or until partially melted. Mix the chocolate so that the residual heat melts the remainder, and then set aside to cool.

In a mixer bowl, cream the cream cheese and butter together, scraping down the bowl as needed. Mix in the melted white chocolate and add the vanilla extract until they are well-combined.

Add the cinnamon extract and the powdered sugar (about half a cup at a time) and mix on low, again scraping down the bowl as needed.

Put the frosting in the refrigerator to chill.

When the cupcakes are cooled and the frosting is at a chilled but piping consistency (which is hard to tell, you just kinda have to try piping it and see), frost the cupcakes.

Let me tell you the secret of nicely decorated cupcakes. You know, those nice swirls you see on “professional” cupcakes? Giant icing tips. This is the accessory you have to have in order to mimic the look of bakery-bought cupcakes. The first few times I made cupcakes I was so frustrated because “They don’t look like professional cupcakes, aargh!” Then I realized my tip was too small. You can’t find large tips at your local grocery store, so you have to go to the pros. In my case, I went to the Home Cake Decorating Supply Company in Maple Leaf and bought the largest tips I could find. I went home, tried them out, and voila, I had that fancy cupcake look, all for about $2.50.

I should mention, the frosting recipe makes way more than you’ll need for a dozen cupcakes, so you might consider making 1 1/2 batches of the cupcakes (or, if you’re stingy with the frosting, then two batches) so that the frosting won’t go to waste.