September is apparently the month for birthdays because this week it was another one of my best friends birthdays and you know what birthdays mean...desserts, desserts, and more desserts. Since I love to make desserts though, I figured this would be another great opportunity to test my baking ability. She asked me to make an Oreo cheesecake too but since I had already made that, I switched it up a little bit. Originally I was going to make an Oreo layer cake that my mom and I had made before but I kinda ran out of time because being in college things tend to get a little busy so I just decided to make cupcakes instead. Don't worry the last minute change was a great decision though. The recipe for the cupcakes came from another cooking blog called Beantown Baker and the link to the website with the recipe is http://www.beantownbaker.com/2010/04/oreo-cupcakes-third-time-is-charm.html The recipe calls for...
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups flour + 2 tablespoons for the Oreo chunks
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 2/3 cup sugar
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 package of Oreos
As you'll soon come to find out, I never follow the recipe exactly. I like to add my own spin to all them or it's just because I don't have everything so I like to improvise haha. For this recipe the only thing that I really changed was the fact that I used skim milk because that's what I drink and I added about a 1/3 cup of chocolate chips because I pretty much add chocolate chips to everything that I bake.
First things first, I preheated the oven to the token 350F. While the oven was heating up, I started to twist apart the Oreos the put in the bottom of the cupcakes. I put the side with the cream on the bottom of the baking cups and saved the other half to use later. Here's what they looked like in the pan before the batter...
The whole twisting apart took a little bit to learn but I figured no one will miss a little cream right?
After I finished twisting apart the Oreos, I started to make the batter...this is where I ran into trouble. So I didn't see the whole room temperature aspect for the stick of butter so I decided to just start beating it in the mixer after only leaving it out for about 15 minutes. The butter was still in a huge chunk and kept getting stuck on the sides so I thought lets use a spatchula to scrap it off the sides and into the bowl...bad idea. As I was scrapping the sides, the spatchula got too close to the beaters and well you can only guess it got caught. RIP electric mixer :( The beaters got totally bent and screwed up so my mixer is sadly no more right now. Thankfully one of my other roommates had a hand mixer so I carried on. I proceeded to continue to beat the butter until I thought it was done. I then added the milk and vanilla to the butter and well it wasn't really beating too well. The butter got really chunky and nasty because the milk was cold. So I then pulled the chunks of butter out of the mixture and melted it for about a minute. I added it back to the milk mixture and it didn't really help to much. I had no idea what to do at this point because it looked disgusting and it definitely didn't look anything like cupcake dough. So I did the thing that I always do, I called my mom haha. She told me to leave the mixture out for a little bit so that it would get to room temperature and then try to mix it again.
I left the "mixture" for about 20 minutes and then came back and tried to beat it more. It worked a little better but it still wasn't looking how I thought it should. At this point it was either throw the "mixture" out and start over or carry on and hope it ended up well. I decided to not give up so I started to mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) in another bowl. I then combined the dry ingredients to the "mixture" and they actually began to mix together! It actually started to look like batter and I was so happy! I also added the sugar after this and beat the mixture for about 5 minutes. The egg whites were the next thing to be added but again they were not at room temperature because I missed that part. It also took me about 5 eggs to actually get 3 egg whites because it proved to be a little more difficult to separate them than expected. After battling with the eggs, I added the whites to the batter and beat it for another 3 minutes. The final ingredient to the batter was the rest of the Oreos that I had cut into fourths and tossed with the 2 tablespoons of flour. I mixed them in by hand and added the extra crumbs to the batter as well. This is also the point where I added the chocolate chips. This is what the batter turned out to look like...
Yay real batter!
I then used an ice cream scoop to fill the baking cups and popped them into the oven for about 20 minutes. When the timer went off, I took them out and checked them with a fork but they weren't done so I cooked them for another 5 minutes. After taking them out the second time they were cooked perfectly! I took the cooked cupcakes out of the pan and put in the remaining 5 baking cups with Oreos, added the batter, and then put them in the oven for 25 minutes. I didn't ice the cupcakes till the next day because I didn't have time that night. The icing recipe called for...
8 oz cream cheese at room temperature
1 stick butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3-4 cups of powdered sugar
This time I actually read the directions and took the cream cheese and butter out of the fridge and beat them together when they were actually at room temperature. I beat them together for about 2 minutes and then added the vanilla extract. The powdered sugar was then added in increments of 1 cup because if you added it all at once, my kitchen would have looked like it snowed haha. I ended up adding around 3 1/2 cups and I also added some of the leftover Oreos to it as well. I then iced the cupcakes but had leftover frosting for some reason. Here was the final product...
Again if you like Oreos, I would definitely recommend this recipe. My friends absolutely loved them and said they were one of the best things they've ever eaten. I was really encouraged when they said that since it was kind of a struggle making them but I guess it goes to show you should never give up!
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