Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake

So! Since its been so long, I am ambushing you guys with treats galore!! Here is another delicious treat! It is one of my boyfriends favorite, and I tend to make it for his birthday every year! Since he is so dang picky, its hard to actually find a delicious treat he likes! So I make it a lot! I also make these in cupcake form! They are super delicious either way, but this is the cake version! Its really easy! Yay! Cookies and cake in one!!! (well kind of cookies....but the dough is the best part anyways!)

 (Adapted from Annie's Eats

Ingredients: 

Cake:

3 sticks salted butter, softened
1½ cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 2/3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
1 cup milk

Cookie Dough Filling:

4 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 tbsp. light brown sugar, packed
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
7 oz. sweetened condensed milk
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

Frosting:
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
3½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. salt
3 tbsp. milk
2½ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

To make the cake, first preheat your oven to 350°! It has to be nice and toasty for the cake. Take your flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and sift together into a bowl and set aside. Then take your room temperature butter and cream it with the brown sugar.Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing until incorporated after each egg. Blend in the vanilla. Alternately add in your milk and dry ingredients, start and end with the dry ingredients. Separate the batter into two grease 9-inch pans. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean! Take out and let cool.

To make the filling, cream the butter and sugar together. Add in the flour, mix well. Use your sweetened condensed milk, sometimes this doesn't take the whole 7 oz. you may use less, just mix in the 'milk' until you get the consistency of cookie dough. It will be a little bit stickier than regular dough though! (ha, I rhymed :p)

Mix in the vanilla and the chocolate chips! And you're done! 

After your cake is cooled, and you have evened out the tops (if you want, its not totally necessary!), take the cookie dough and spread in the middle. Make sure its on nice and thick! The more the better! Yummy in everybody's tummy :) 

To make the frosting, beat together the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until creamy. Mix in the powdered sugar until smooth. Beat in the flour and salt. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and well blended. Then ice your cake all pretty!

I used some wilton fondant and put that on top of the icing, just to try out using fondant. It didn't taste that bad! From what I heard the fondant would taste gross, but mine was ok! I also cut out circles and made it polka dot for mah boyfrand :p 

Sorry for the crappy picture though :(

Enjoy!!

Luvyerguts<3

N&A

White Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

So here's another recipe for you :) Considering these cupcakes are in our pictures on the top page, I figured it was about time I got around to posting the recipe for them! And I am super excited because I'm almost done with school (3 more days!!) and then I get to take a nice long drive with Mr. Martini back to Texas!!! And get to see my lovely seester!! Yayyy Seester!!! :D

Anyways, these delicious cupcakes, the white chocolate raspberry ones, are my all time favorite cupcakes. They are sooooo good! They cake is a rich flavor and it is filled with a raspberry mousse, then topped off with a delicious white chocolate buttercream! :) yuummmm. It's really easy to make too! I lovvveee them! And they are great for the 'fancier' parties! Enjoy!

 

Ingredients: 

White chocolate Cupcake:

1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt
  1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

White Chocolate Buttercream:

 1 stick butter

1/2 cup milk

6 oz. white chocolate (melted)

1 teaspoon vanilla

5 cups powdered sugar

Raspberry Mousse Filling:

1 8 oz package cream cheese, SOFTENED
1 15 oz jar seedless raspberry jam, all fruit
1 8 oz tub Cool Whip

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Beat the butter with the sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Stir together the milk, lemon juice, and the vanilla. On low speed, add half of the milk mixture. Mix until incorporated; scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add half of the dry ingredients. Mix until combined and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining milk mixture and the dry ingredients in the same manner. Divide the batter among the 14 cupcake molds. Bake on the middle oven rack for about 15-18 minutes 

To make the icing, blend the butter and milk together until creamy. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time. Mix for about 1 minute until it is light and fluffy! Then mix in the melted white chocolate. Make sure that you didn't burn your chocolate, otherwise it will make your icing chunky! Groossss. Blend in he vanilla last! 

To make the raspberry mousse, blend the cream cheese until soft, then mix in the raspberry jam. Fold in the cool whip. 

After your cupcakes are cooled, use a knife or corer and take out a portion of the center. Fill that hole with delicious raspberry mousse awesomeness then top it off with the white chocolate buttercream! If you'd like, garnish it with a raspberry rolled in sugar! YUM! 

Enjoy!

Luvyerguts<3

N&!A

Salted Caramel Banana Cupcakes

Hello! Sorry I haven't posted in well....forever...but school life has been heeccttiicc!!! But I promise to start up, and keep up! from now on! So for my first 'catch-up' post, I'm going to let you in on my recipe for the most delicious creation I've made! If of course, you like bananas! And I am a HUGE fan of banana cake. I decided to take some of my old bananas and use them up! And the best way...CUPCAKES! Yay!! My favorite! And I took these to my photography class, and everyone melted over how delicious they were! They do take awhile to make, so be wary of that!! Alrighty, here it is for ya'll!!

Ingredients:

Banana Cake:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
12 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2½ cups sugar
6 eggs
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. buttermilk
1 1/3 cups mashed ripe banana

Salted Caramel Buttercream:

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup caramel
1/8-1/4 tsp salt

French Custard Filling:

1/3 c. sugar
1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. milk
1 slightly beaten egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. whipping cream, whipped

 Instructions:

 Make the french custard filling first, since it has to cool. In saucepan, combine sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt. Gradually stir in milk. Cook and stir until mixture thickens and boils; cook and stir 2 to 3 minutes longer. Stir a little hot mixture into egg yolk; return to hot mixture. Cook and stir until mixture just boils. Add vanilla; cool. Beat smooth and fold in whipped cream. Cool in the fridge while you are doing the rest!

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350° F.  Line two cupcake pans with paper liners.  In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt; whisk together and set aside.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Reduce the mixer speed to medium low and add in eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Mix in the mashed banana until well combined.  With the mixer on low speed alternately add the dry ingredients and buttermilk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing only until just incorporated. Divide the batter between the prepared cupcake liners, filling each about 2/3 to ¾ full.  Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20-22 minutes.  Allow to cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.
To make the caramel sauce, combine the butter, heavy cream and brown sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat.  Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.  Once it reaches a boil, lower the heat to medium and continue to boil until the mixture is thickened, about 8 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool.
To make the frosting, in a large mixing bowl, beat butter and vanilla on high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.  Turn mixer to low/medium and slowly add 1/2 cup powdered sugar at a time.  Beat until combined.  Add in caramel sauce and salt.  Beat until desired consistency is achieved.

After Your cupcakes have cooled, use a knife, or a corer if you have one, to cut out the center of the cupcake! Fill that with the delicious custard filling, and then top off with the salted caramel buttercream! If you have caramel on hand, drizzle some on top just for good measure, and dab a bit of salt on top too! Then eat them! Cuz they are AWESOME!!

Luvyerguts<3
N&A

The Daring Kitchen, Challenge #1

Hey guys! So earlier this August N&A decided to join this super duper website called The Daring Kitchen, which is basically a site for super enthusiastic bakers and cooks to join up and do a "challenge" in their perspective field of expertise, you know, cooking or baking. Being the baker, N decided to join these fancy escapades and do their fancy challenges!! She wanted to find new and exciting recipes and different types of desserts to make :) The first challenge, and so far only challenge, N&A got to attempt together! and it was........
Making Your Own Candy!!!!

Now neither N nor A had made candy before, minus the occasional fudge (which even then was a little bit iffy). So this challenge was going to be a bit hard for us. We first started out by coming up with what kind of candy, because one had to be a chocolate candy, and the second could be whatever kind of candy you wanted. So we decided to make chocolate truffles!! A little bit of a stretch for the non-candy makers, but we tried anyways. 

Flavor wise we went with dark chocolate-mint truffles, white chocolate with Grand Marnie, and dark chocolate with Kahlua and pecans. Sooo delicious in the flavor combinations!! So to do these truffles we made a chocolate ganache, flavored it with however much flavor we deemed the right amount (probably too much haha), let it sit out and set up (which it didn't really set up so they were very goopy), and then roll into balls and dip in chocolate coating! It sounds so simple! But really, we had some issues!! But they still tasted delicious, even if they weren't super pretty!!

Ingredients for Ganache:

1 ¾ cup (9 oz/250 gm) Dark/Bittersweet Chocolate, finely chopped
2/3 cup (5 oz / 160 ml) Double/Heavy Cream (36% - 48% butterfat)
OR
1 ¾ cup (9 oz/250 gm) Milk Chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup (4 oz / 120 ml) Double/Heavy Cream (36% - 48% butterfat)
OR
1 ¾ cup (9 oz/250 gm) White Chocolate, finely chopped
¼ cup (2 oz / 60 ml) Double/Heavy Cream (36% - 48% butterfat)

For flavoring, add about 2-4 TBS. of your choice!

Instructions:

1. Finely chop or grate the chocolate
2. Place in a heatproof bowl
3. In a saucepan, heat cream until just about to boil (it will start bubbling around the edges of the pot)
4. Pour the cream over the chocolate
5. Gently stir the mixture until all the chocolate has melted and it is smooth
Tip: If you end up with pieces of chocolate that won’t melt, put the bowl over simmering water (but not touching the water) and stir gently until it’s all melted
Tip: Be careful if you do need to heat it over simmering water, if the mixture gets too hot it will split and you’ll end up with gooey chocolate swimming in oil, so don’t overheat the ganache, steam from a gentle simmer is all you need.
6. Stir in your desired flavorings

Mixing the chocolate and the hot cream!

Kahlua dark chocolate pecan mixture!

dark chocolate mint!

white chocolate grand marnier mix!

All 3 delicious creations!!

Truffle Instructions:

1. Allow the ganache to firm up in a container of choice, preferably deep rather than shallow
2. Using a teaspoon or melon baller, scoop up room temperature ganache
3. With gloved hands, roll the balls between your palms to round them off
4. Dip in tempered chocolate or roll in various ingredients like cocoa or chopped nuts as desired
Tip: If dipping in chocolate, it’s best to refrigerate the ganache balls before dipping so that they’re firm and don’t melt from the warm chocolate
Tip: For a thicker chocolate shell, dip once in tempered chocolate and allow to set. Then do a second dipping or smear a small amount of chocolate over the truffle and roll in desired ingredients
5. Place on parchment paper until set

Dark-Chocolate Mint Truffles

Dark Chocolate Pecan and Kahlua Tuffles

 Now for our second candy we went ahead and made more chocolate, since we're both chocolate fanatics :) We decided to make chocolate 'bowls' and fill them with various flavored mousse's. We made 3 bowls, one chocolate, one white chocolate, and one marbled. We then made 2 types of mousse's, cinnamon and nutmeg mousse and a peanut butter mousse. We topped the cinnamon mousse bowls with fresh fruit and a chocolate design, then the peanut butter mousse with just a chocolate design! Now to make these we just used a template from Micheal's and heavy cream to make the mousse, so we don't have a recipe! But it's super easy! And super delicious!!! Enjoy! =D

All 3 bowls, peanut butter in the middle :)

Cinnamon Mousse Chocolate Bowls

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

Do N had to leave fantastic Texas last week =( But it wasn't all bad! When back in Indiana N's boyfriend surprised her with some super fantastic flowers! 

Lillies from N's boyrfiend :)

So of course she decided to pay him back with some DELICIOUS treats. And these aren't just normal treats, these are a combination of two of the most delicious desserts EVER!! And a special addition of N&A's favorite candy :) 

So brownies are N's boyfriend's favorite dessert, and he loves cookie dough! N has made cookie dough cake and cookie dough cupcakes and just plane cookies for him before! Now she discovered this recipe for the most amazing dessert ever. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough  Peanut Butter M&M Brownies. A combination of fantastic fudgy brownies, peanut butter M&M perfection, and the most delicious cookie dough ever slathered on top of it all!! so without further adieu, here's the recipe :)

 Apologies there aren't that many pictures! But the baking process was rushed! 

Brownie Ingredients:

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups light brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour

1 medium bag Peanut Butter M&M's

Cookie Dough Ingredients:

¾ cup unsalted butter
¾ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons whole milk
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups mini chocolate chips

Instructions:

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees.

. Line a 9×13-inch pan with foil, with enough to hang over all four sides. Butter the foil. In a medium glass bowl, melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring after each, until melted and smooth. Set aside to cool slightly. In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract, scraping the bowl as needed. Mix in the melted chocolate until combined. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour and mix just until combined (don’t over-mix). Stir in the m&m's with your spatula, try not to break them up too much! Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 25 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool completely.

To make the cookie dough, in a medium bowl, use an electric mixer on medium speed to combine the butter and both sugars. Add the milk and vanilla and mix until combined. Reduce the speed to low and mix in the flour just until combined. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips. 

Spread all this delicious mixture on top of the cooled cookie dough! Then put it in the fridge or freezer until the cookie dough is firm enough to cut with a knife. It makes the treat easier to cut if its colder and firmer! Then try not to eat all of it, although N couldn't resist having one....or 5....

<3Luvyerguts<3

N&A

Animal Cupcakes!

 So both N&A are working at a lovely summer camp at the YMCA. We are both counselors for a "theme camp" and last weeks theme was "Wild Kingdom". Now being as awesome as we are, N&A decided to make some scrum-diddily-umptious cupcakes for the little kiddies for the "Fun Friday!" Now being an animal themed week we wanted to do something related, and decided to do animal cupcakes! Of course we didn't exactly have all the materials to do the decorating since N is the one who has all the cake decorating supplies in Indiana! But we tried to make-do with what we had! 

So we went over to the Wal-Mart and bought some delicious Nutter Butter cookies, Swedish Fish, Marshmallows (big and little!), and some starburst! These delicious supplies were used to decorate our awesome cupcakes! We had to use ziploc baggies to pipe out our icing too! But it still looked half-way decent! 

Now when we were doing this, our favorite cupcakes were the hippos! And we thought for sure that they would go first with our campers! Of course not all goes as we think, since we also thought our cupcakes would be about ten times cuter! But oh well! We thought they were adorable! So here ya go!

Cupcake Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Unsalted Butter

2 Cups Sugar

5 Eggs

4 Large Egg Whites

2 tsp. Vanilla Extract

4 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

2 tsp. Baking Powder

2 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Salt

1 1/4 Cups Milk

Cupcake Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350° and line your cupcake pans! Its a lot of cupcakes for this recipe! 

Sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Put your egg whites in a separate bowl  and whip until medium peaks form! Set these aside for later!

Start of by creaming the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs in one at a time, mixing completely before adding the next egg! Then you need to mix in your 1 1/4 c. milk and the flour mixture alternately, mixing very well after each. Beat on medium-high speed for 2 minutes after all the stuff is mixed in. :) Last you need to fold in your stiffened egg whites! Make sure you don't deflate your egg whites when doing this! be nice and delicate =) 

Put these in your cupcake pans, filling about 3/4 full and then pop them in the oven for about 20-21 minutes! Then they are done! Yay! Let cool completely before decorating with your awesomeness!

Beware the delicious Cake Batter!!!

Easy Vanilla Buttercream:(adopted from Annie's Eats)

2 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. heavy cream 

Directions:

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 20 seconds.  Add confectioners’ sugar and salt; beat at medium-low speed until most of the sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds.  Scrape down the bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined, about 15 seconds.  Scrape bowl, add vanilla and heavy cream, and beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 10 seconds.  Then increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down bowl once or twice.   

Separate your icing into smaller bowls and dye each bowl different colors. we used green, yellow, orange, blue, and pink!

Licking the Beaters of the Icing! The best Part! <3

Decoration List:

Mini-Marshmallows

Regular Marshmallows

Red and Pink Starburst

Swedish Fish

Red and Pink Sprinkles

Nutter Butter Cookies

To decorate, choose what animals you want to do. Here is what we did!

Alligator:

 Ice the whole cupcake with green icing, Stick on a Nutter Butter cookie with about half on the cupcake and half sticking off of it, and place about a tsp. of green icing on top of that, make sure you can see the lines of the cookie through the spread out icing so that it looks like scales! Cut a mini marshmallow in half and squish it on the long sides to make it a little more rounded, and stick this on the top of the Nutter Butter thats on the cupcakes for the eyes! Use a small round tipped piping bag or ziploc bag with a very tiny piece of the corner cut off, to cover the sides of he cookie and around the back and tops of the eyeballs! Take white icing and pipe small lines on the 'mouth' of the gator, for sharp teeth! Then add dots to the middle of the eyes, and sprinkle with green glitter! Tada! You're done!

Hippopotamus:

Pretty much the same as the alligator, but use pink icing, or whatever color you want to use, and use cheerios for the ears and nose. Pipe small round white dots for eyes on the Nutter Butter and another small colored dot in the middle of the white for the pupil. Then it's done!

A's Finished Hippos!

Lion:

Cover your cupcake with whatever color you want your Lion, then pipe the 'mane' on the outside of the cupcake with a small star tipped piping bag. Use a darker color than the one you used for the lion color. Use a mini-marshmallow that is cut in half diagonally and dip the sticky side in red/pink sprinkles. Stick these in the mane so they are slightly sticking out. for the nose use red starburst, cut into pieces and then rolled into the cat-like shape of a nose. It should look kind of like a heart, but not such a crease on the top of the heart. Use icing or rolled starburts pieces to make the mouth and whiskers! Pipe the eyes on with white and another color of icing.

N Decorating the Lion!

Pig:

The pig cupcakes are so cute! All you need to do is cover your cupcake in pink icing, cut a regular marshmallow in half and stick it on the pick cupcake. Cover that with the icing too. Use the cheerios as the pig ears and cover with icing.Pipe on eyes and the dots on the nose! So easy and super cute!

Penguins:

The penguins are N's personally favorite! She LOVES penguins! So using white, pipe a semi-circle on the bottom of the cupcake. Fill with the white icing. Using black/blue icing cover the rest of the cupcakes. Pipe big oval eyes on the blue part, then using a starburst that has been cut in half diagonally into a triangle, stick it on the cupcake a little lower than the eyes! And you're done!

So there are a lot more animals you can make, and we made a couple more but they didn't look as good! These were are favorites, and the kids favorites too! Out of all the cupcakes, the lions went first, then the pigs, then the penguins, then the lions! The Hippos were last! But it was ok because N&A got to eat their favorites!

Luvyerguts<3

N&A

Texican Turkey Tacos

We are all about ground turkey at our house-turkey burgers, turkey tacos, turkey spaghetti, turkey casserole, turkey sausage-we adore it!  Daring the recent ground turkey salmonella incidents, we decided to use ground turkey twice in one week (I know, I'm sure you're all shocked).  This time we went with turkey tacos, with a Texican twist! :)

Taco Meat:

1 lb ground turkey
2 tablespoons red pepper
Sea salt and ground black pepper to taste (A used about a tablespoon of each)
1-2 teaspoons each chili powder, paprika, cayenne pepper
We also used about a tablespoon of a premixed fajita seasoning that we have that was picked up from a local vendor

Put all of these things into a large bowl and mix them up-use your hands (wash 'em first!) and don't be afraid to get dirty because ground turkey gets quite sticky! Another way to do this would be to put the turkey into a pan, and sprinkle the seasonings onto it as it cooks.

To garnish our tacos we used chopped iceberg lettuce, diced roma tomatoes, diced red onions, sliced avocado, shredded cheese, and chopped green onions.

Add or subtract toppings to your liking, and most importantly: DON'T BE AFRAID TO BE CREATIVE!

Because a taco is pretty much a complete dinner in a shell, we paired ours with tortilla chips and salsa and called it done! Enjoy.:)

Loveyerguts<3
A&N