It’s no secret that I love sweets and cupcakes are right up there at the top of my list of favorite desserts (as you’ve seen). A friend of mine recently visited and brought me some delectable chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes that were such a yummy blend of cookie and cake that I knew I just had to find a way to recreate it myself. And boy, did I! Check out my super easy recipe that just involves mixing cookie dough and cake batter together in the right quantities. Then get ready to stuff yourself silly. And then if you have any left, you can use them to wow your friends!
Make the cookie dough
My recipe for the cookie dough is a pretty basic one, and works well.
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 12 oz chocolate chips
Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl and set aside. Add butter, brown sugar, and white sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer
Add the chocolate chips and mix for just a minute until they are evenly distributed in the cookie dough.
Make the cake batter
For the cake batter, I prefer to keep it as simple as possible and go with a classic stand-by: Betty Crocker SuperMoist Yellow Cake Mix.
Since your mixer bowl is already full of cookie dough, just use any bowl and a whisk to quickly mix the batter.
Mix and bake
You should now have about 4.5 cups of cookie dough and 4 cups of cake batter. Time to start mixing! I’ve tested different ratios and found that 2 parts dough to 1 part batter works the best (but you can use more dough for a denser cupcake or more batter for a lighter cupcake).
So with the 2:1 dough/batter ratio, that means you’ll dump all of your cookie dough into a big bowl and add 2 cups of cake batter to it, and mix it all up!
Doesn’t it look delectable already?
(You’re going to have 2 cups of cake batter left over that you won’t need for this recipe. You can use that to make a dozen boring, yellow cupcakes when you’re done.)
Now put cupcake liners
By the way, see how easily I was able to grab this cupcake pan with my oven mitt? That’s because I followed my own advice and left one cup empty!
Give the cupcakes a few minutes to settle before digging in to them, so that the cookie part of it can finish cooking. You know how it goes with cookies… you have to let them sit just a few minutes. Then, feel free to break one open and enjoy the ooey, gooey, chocolate yumminess!
Frost the cupcakes
Whatever cupcakes have survived this far would be even better with frosting on them, and once they’re fully cooled, you can frost them without risk of it melting.
This is my favorite part of this recipe. My newly invented, homemade, cookie dough frosting! I used all the same flavors and most of the same ingredients as go into cookie dough, but in a sweeter and smoother variation. You will love it.
- 1 sticks butter, softened
- 1/4 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp molasses
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
Before I continue, let me answer some questions you’re probably already asking:
- “Is that enough frosting?” Probably not. This recipe only makes enough to put a small swirl of frosting on each cupcake, but I wanted to make the recipe easy to double or triple (or quadruple!) if you want, so I gave the smallest quantities possible.
- “Why molasses?” Well, typical cookie dough has brown sugar in it, but using brown sugar made the frosting too gritty, so I couldn’t do that. Since brown sugar is brown because it has molasses in it, I got the same flavor by just adding a little molasses to the recipe and using powdered sugar.
- “Flour? Really?” Seems weird, I know, but cookie dough has flour in it, and if we want this frosting to taste like the real thing, it needs that flour in there!
Ok, now just take all those ingredients and put them in your stand mixer bowl and whip them up until light and creamy.
Use an icing bag
P.S. Jo insists that I tell you that the cupcakes taste best warmed up for 10 seconds in the microwave. Heavenly!
20 comments so far:
Hi! I just made these cookie dough cupcakes… they just came out of the oven. I noticed on your cookie dough recipe that the ingredients list doesn’t say how much white sugar, and the instructions don’t mention when to put in the vanilla. Luckily I had a very similar recipe, so I knew it was 3/4 cup white sugar, and the vanilla goes with the sugars and butter. I haven’t tasted the actual cupcakes yet, but the dough sure came out tasting good! Thanks for the recipe!
Melissa, thank for the catch! I will update the post to include those two things. I hope you enjoy your cupcakes. Let us know!
hi there! loved this recipe! but was wondering if u have a recipe for the cake batter if i don’t want to use cake mix? i used extra chocolate chips. mmm…
thanks for the great recipe!
Thanks, Alexandra! Extra chocolate chips are always yummy
As for the cake batter, I have to say that I’ve never had as good of results with from-scratch batter as I’ve had with Betty, so I stick with the mix. The technique will theoretically work with any cake recipe, although you may need to adjust your ratio a bit to get the right taste, depending on the density of your cake batter.
I made these for a family dinner this Labor Day weekend and they were a huge hit! I brought the icing in a separate bowl and let everyone ice his own. This way, people could heat them up in the microwave and then add the icing. My husband thinks a quick 10 seconds in the microwave makes them perfect!
Great idea, Molly. Thanks for sharing!
Oh. My. These sound a-maze-ing. I can’t wait to try them!
Hi,
this recipe looks amazing but was wanting to make one large cake instead of cup cakes. Have you any suggestions on how to adjust the cooking time for this? Any help would be greatly appreciated
thanx
That’s a great idea, Alex, and I’m not sure why it never occurred to me before! I have not tried this recipe in a large cake pan, so I’m afraid I don’t have any suggestions to offer. If you try it out, please do share your results with us, so we’ll all know
I made these today but mine turned out a little dry think maybe you should add a little more cake mix to make them more moist. The recipe was very easy to follow though.
Thanks for the feedback, Sarah. Fortunately the recipe is very easy to adjust!
This recipe looks awesome! my neices birthday is this weekend so i think i’ll make these! =)
just wondering, how many cupcakes does the recipe make. well for a standard cupcake pan.
Thanks, =)
Hi Michelle. If you use the same ratio of batter to dough that I used, you’ll get about 2 dozen of the cookie dough cupcakes. You’ll also have enough plain cake batter left to make another dozen regular cupcakes. Enjoy!
Jo does require 3 times the amount of frosting that that recipe makes!
Hi. I was just wondering how much butter to put in the icing if I was to measure by cups instead of one stick ?
Hi Ashley. One stick of butter measures 1/2 cup. Enjoy!
thank you very very much !
im 12 and i found them quite easy and tasty thanks for the great recipe !:)
thanks for the great recipe. i love to bake and cook and im 11 (6th grade). i am planning on making it for a math project(i know a MATH project)on Thursday and sharing it with my class on Friday. By the way how much time should wait before icing them.
Sarai, sounds like you’ve found a fun way to combine sweets and school! Let us know how your classmates like the cupcakes. Wait until the cupcakes are cool before icing them, so the icing doesn’t melt. It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes or so.