Vanilla Oreo Cupcakes

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I had a chance to try a new cupcake recipe from Beantown Baker when I was trying to think of something out-of-the-ordinary to attract donations for the Walk for Hunger. I had made an earlier version of the same recipe for a previous bake sale at work, and I knew people would rave over the oreo bottoms.

For me, one of things that I liked about the recipe was the fact that it had a vanilla cake base rather than a chocolate one - I felt like this would really allow the Oreo flavor shine.

Without further ado, I give you Oreo Cupcakes.

Ingredients
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups flour, plus 2 Tbsp for the Oreo chunks
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 2/3 cup sugar
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 pkg Oreo Cookies (~45 cookies)

Directions

Preheat over to 350F. Insert liners into a medium cupcake pan.


Twist apart 24 Oreos. Place the wafer with filling on it, filling side up, in the bottom of each paper liner. Cut other wafers in half. Save 24 halves to place in the frosting. Crush the other wafer halves, also for garnishing. (I somehow overlooked this step and I'm not going to lie, I ended up eating the extra halves so there wasn't anything left to crush!)

Cut the remaining Oreo cookies into quarters with a sharp knife. Toss with 2 Tbsp flour and set aside.

In a large bowl cream the butter until fluffy, about 3-5 minutes. Add the milk and vanilla and mix to combine.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to butter mixture. Mix until integrated. Stir in sugar. With an electric mixer on low speed, beat for 30 seconds. Turn the mixer up to medium speed and beat for 2 minutes. Add the egg whites. Beat for 2 more minutes.

Stir in the quartered cookies.

Fill the cupcake lines three-quarters full. Once I hit this point, the dough was so full of chunks, I was honestly afraid there wasn't enough batter to balance out the cookie. I tried to get a scoop of mostly cake batter to cover the cookie on the bottom of each cup and then place a scoop of cookie-filled batter on top of that:

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of cupcakes comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in the pan. I was happy to see that the cupcakes were noticeably still full of cookie chunks albeit a little flat. I had made the error of grabbing an unmarked stick of margarine for this recipe instead of butter, so that's my best guess for why these ended up flatter than I would've liked.

Frosting

8 oz cream cheese at room temp
1 stick butter at room temp
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3-4 cups powdered sugar

Directions
Cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add vanilla extract. Slowly add powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached.

Once cupcakes have cooled completely, frost with cream cheese frosting. Sprinkle with crushed Oreos (I skipped this step for the aforementioned gluttony) and place 1/2 of an Oreo on the frosting of each cupcake.

Pretty attractive, if I do say so myself and they accomplished my goal of attracting donations.

The verdict? Unfortunately, I managed somehow not to try one of these. I was trying to keep as much of the batch to sell for donations and I ended up setting some aside to give to our neighbors' children as well as Andrew's coworkers. I will have to base my opinion on Andrew's reaction, he said he really liked them because it had such a strong Oreo flavor and so many cookie chunks. Admittedly though, I might end up using a doctored cake mix next time for simplicity's sake and to get the attractive domed tops that I like in my cupcakes (although that does make them harder to frost evenly!)