Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I have such a love/hate relationship with cookie dough.

Before your eyes pop out of your head at the sight of the word "hate" in the same sentence as the phrase "cookie dough," let me explain. I have a nasty habit of taste testing cookie dough to an extreme. We're talking serious quality control that results in major stomach aches. In fact, I had some left over cookie dough hiding in my freezer that I just dipped (more like cannon-balled) into and am now reaping the benefits.

I guess you could say my moments of hate are self induced, but for some reason I've never quite learned my lesson. Weird how that happens...

This weekend it was one of E's nephew's third birthday. I've been dying to make Cookie Dough Cupcakes and I thought this sounded like the perfect opportunity!

Feast your eyes on this:

Hmmm...I'm beginning to see a trend with my cupcake decorating!

These cupcakes were actually really easy to dream up and create! I grabbed a basic vanilla cupcake recipe from How To Eat A Cupcake and some cookie dough from the grocery store. I know, I know...I could have made the cookie dough myself, but I guess I got a little lazy. :)

I rolled the cookie dough into quarter size balls and put them in the freezer overnight to make sure they were completely frozen. This ensured that the cookie dough would really stay doughy during the cupcake baking process!

The next morning I got up bright and early to whip together the cupcake batter...

Isn't it just gorgeous? I never thought batter could be so attractive.

I filled each cupcake liner about half full and then dropped a ball of frozen cookie dough in the center. In my oven, each batch took about 20 minutes to bake and here's how they turned out:

The kitchen smelled like heaven. E and I didn't even wait for the cupcakes to cool before we dove into one. The vanilla cupcake was perfectly sweet and the cookie dough was still a little gooey.

I decided to top the cupcakes with a basic chocolate buttercream and a little cookie, but I think vanilla buttercream would also work well!

Enjoy :)