Oreo Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

My plan to do auto-posting while I was away on vacation this past week did not work.  I have to figure it out!  So, now I am manually posting later than I planned.  Here we go!

Cookie's and Cream Cupcakes: Everyone is making these, I see them everywhere.   I even baked a version of them when I first began this blog.  During that trial I used a box cake mix and wasn't happy with the taste.  Also, I did not show how to make them, which I will do this time around!

The vanilla cupcake recipe is:

Scratch Cookies and Cream Vanilla Cupcakes

Adapted slightly from Martha Stewart

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups milk

1 cup of crushed Oreo Cookies

24 Large Oreo Cookies

Mini Oreo Cookies for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line cupcake pan with liners; set aside.  In a medium mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.  In a large mixing bowl cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time,  mixing until incorporated.  Scrape down sides of bowl and mix in vanilla.

Add flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with flour.  Stir in crushed cookie bits.  Scrape down sides of bowl.  

Spoon a small amount of batter into the bottom of each liner.  Put a regular size Oreo Cookie on top.  Contine to divide batter evenly among liners on top of the cookies, filling each about 2/3 full.  

Bake until cake springs back, approximately 18-20 minutes.  After removing pan from over place on wire rack to cool for 5 minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pan and let cool completely on rack.  When cooled, top with buttercream icing and garnish with mini Oreo Cookie.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

2 sticks of butter (I did use salted)

4 cups of confectioner's sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup of crushed Oreo Cookies

3-5 tablespoons half and half

Place Oreos into a Ziploc Freezer size bag.

Use a rolling pin, water  bottle, anything you can roll across the cookies to crush them.

Using a mixer, beat butter until it is fluffy.  Add 3 cups of sugar - one cup at a time - mixing until it's completely incorporated.  Add vanilla, half and half, and cookie bits along with the last cup of sugar and mix together, adding more half and half until the icing is the desired consistency.  Pipe icing onto cupcakes and garnish with an Oreo Mini.

This is the Martha Stewart Cupcake recipe I used for the Raspberry Buttercream Cookies, so the cake was a bit more dense than I would like.  Still looking for a scratch vanilla cupcake recipe!  I do love these Cookies and Cream Cupcakes, though, especially when you bite into it and find a cookie surprise inside!  :)

I have shared this recipe on:


 

Chocolate Covered Oreo Cookies

As I mentioned in my previous chocolate molding post, I also bought a chocolate mold specifically for covering Oreo cookies (the molds will be labeled as such, so you can be sure they will be deep enough to cover the Oreos completely).  Once again, I will say I need to do a bit more research regarding melting and molding chocolate.  This mold, like the dice mold I used prior, had a raised design surface.

I wanted to paint an outline of the glass with white and then "fill" the glass with pink to mimic a cosmopolitan.  Had I chosen a simple design and used only one color of chocolate to start, I believe I would have been more successful.  The extra step of staging colors and/or painting part of the mold is a whole other ballgame.  It requires a steady hand and precision, which, I must admit, I lack.  Here is an example of my difficulty with staying in the lines:

Perhaps if I had painting experience or had any artistic ability this would have come more naturally to me.  Maybe, but I am going to go with the-chocolate-was-too-thick excuse (actually it was!).  My next idea was to color the martini glass in all pink.  This was easier, but not without error.  I used a toothpick to trim the glass edges and hoped for the best.  They turned out better:

Finally, after the chocolate has set and you ease them out of the mold and it's finally time to take a bite, it's all worth the effort!:

You can never go wrong with an Oreo cookie and smothering them in chocolate seems like the right thing to do.  :)  I recommend trying this, they would make a great snack, dessert, or party favors.  You can put them on sticks and make chocolate covered Oreo lollipops (just make sure to use Double Stuff Oreos in place of the regular cookies).  Happy Molding!!