Recipe – Cookie Cupcakes

Cookie + Cupcake = Coocake? Cupkie?

A couple of desserts that are irresistible to me are cookies and cupcakes. There’s nothing like a moist, warm cookie to make me happy. I used to work at Starbucks and would “drop” a few double chocolate chunk cookies just so that I could mark them out and eat them during my lunches (shh, don’t tell anyone). I’ve made cookies in all shapes and sizes, and Minhan challenged me to do something more creative with my cookies and I decided on trying out a combination recipe of cookies and cupcakes!

Dough and Batter

The cookie dough is a basic chocolate chip cookie dough that I froze solid for 2 hours so that it wouldn’t spread too much as it baked inside of the cupcake batter. The tricky thing about this recipe was estimating how much cupcake batter to spoon into the liners. Cupcake batter tends to rise in the oven, and I wasn’t sure how the dense solid ball of cookie dough would affect that. Anywhere between 1/4 to 1/3 full would probably work!

The Finished Product

I got way too excited when they finished baking and totally forgot to take a picture before icing them with the peanut butter icing. The cupcake batter rose and partially engulfed the cookie dough, and the cookie dough was gooey without spreading! After having a major fail with piping the peanut butter frosting using a ziplock back and a piping tip, I decided just to use a cheese spreader. Topped off with a couple of chocolate chunks and this made for a tasty treat!

Materials (makes 8 coocakes/cupkies):

Cookie dough (makes a little extra that can be baked as cookies!):

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips

Cupcakes:

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• 1/8 cup white sugar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp white vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy milk, room temperature

Peanut Butter Frosting:

• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2 tbsp soy milk

Methods

1. Make the cookie batter, scoop with large scooper onto baking pan, freeze 1-2hr.
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F
3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together egg, sugars, oil, vanilla, and vinegar.
5. Combine dry ingredients with wet, whisk in milk
6. Spoon batter into lined cupcake pan ~25% full
7. Drop frozen cookie batter into middle of batter
8. Bake for 15min

A Bit of History of Peanut Butter

There’s not really a rich history about cookie cupcakes, so I thought I’d write a little something about one of the ingredients: peanut butter! The first recorded usage of roasted peanut “paste” was by the ancient Aztecs and Incas. In recent history, peanut butter manufacturing is credited to three people: 1) Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884 patented peanut paste, 2) Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (founder of Kellogg cereal) in 1895 patented the process of creating peanut butter from raw peanuts, and 3) Dr. Ambrose Straub in 1903 patented a peanut-butter-making machine.

In 1922, a chemist named Joseph Rosefield invented the smooth peanut butter by using partially hydrogenated oils to keep the oil from separating (though I would never suggest consuming partially hydrogenated oils!). He eventually started producing his own peanut butter in 1932 under the name Skippy. In World Wars I and II, peanut butter became an important part of the Army’s rations, and some say that it was the U.S. Army that popularized the peanut butter and jelly sandwich during WWII.

Just a note: personally, I only use peanut butter that only has one ingredient on the ingredient list: roasted peanuts.

Fun facts about peanut butter:

• Archibutyrophobia is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.
• The largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich weighed 1,342 pounds.
• Roughly 540 peanuts are required to make a 12oz jar of peanut butter.
• Americans eat roughly 700 million pounds of peanut butter a year (pretty sure I contribute greatly to this number). This is enough to coat the bottom of the Grand Canyon!
• The average American child eats over 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before graduating from high school.

January 24th is National Peanut Butter Day!

As usual, comments, conversations, feedback, and messages are always welcome!

References

“15 fun facts about peanut butter”. Robin Shreeves. Retrieved March 27th, 2018.
“The History of Peanut Butter”. Huffington Post. Retrieved March 27th, 2018.
“History of Peanuts & Peanut Butter”. National Peanut Board. Retrieved March 27th, 2018.
“Who Invented Peanut Butter?”. National Peanut Board. Retrieved March 27th, 2018.