C is for Cookie {and Cupcake as well}
Somehow I have managed to have no fewer than six conversations this week involving the dairy queen. I can’t explain it. It just keeps coming up. And we don’t have the good old DQ here, but I did spend nearly five years working the DQ line and I really can’t knock it. I worked at a total of four different stores, but the one where I worked for much of high school was just a pleasant place most of the time. Even if I wrote a college comp assignment on the supposed tragedy of working the fourth of July one summer.
When I first started working there, lifers told me I would stop liking ice cream pretty quickly. I laughed. Surely such a thing is not possible. When you like ice cream, you like ice cream. And yes, yes I do. I ate ice cream every day I worked there, without fail. I secretly loved the night shift because you ended up with a treasure trove of ice cream in your freezer…if someone made a mistake with a flavour or something, it would go in the freezer rather than the rubbish. Every night we had to clear the freezer, and taking it home was just as viable as throwing it, so why not? In the summer, friends would meet up with us at close to share in the mysterious flavour combinations; the rest of the year I took it home to share with the family.
The other day I was really in mood for what used to show up on my drive-thru screen as ORBZCC. That’s an Oreo Blizzard with Chocolate Ice Cream and Cold Chocolate Fudge. We used to make an unofficial blizzard that was half that and half plain old cookies and cream. Aside from the time we put Cherry Nibs through the Blizzard machine, our unofficial menu was fabulous, I tell ya.
Except we don’t have a Dairy Queen here. But we have cupcakes, you know. My kitchen smells just like that unofficial Blizzard. Perfect.
Oreo Cupcakes
Ingredients:
180g unsalted butter
400g brown sugar
250g dark chocolate
3 large eggs, separated
2 teaspoons vanilla
200g plain flour
100g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
8 Oreo cookies, smashed to bits
1 3/4 cup milk
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Set aside but don’t chill.
Heat the oven to 180C and line cupcake tin with papers.
Beat the butter until it is soft, then add sugar and mix until fluffy.
Stir up the egg yolks, then add them to the butter and sugar.
Add the vanilla and the chocolate (just make sure it’s not so hot that it would cook the eggs).
Add the flour, baking powder, soda, alternating with the milk.
Stir in the bashed Oreos until evenly distributed.
In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until peaks form.
Fold in the egg whites, until no more whites show.
Scoop into the cupcake liners straight away, filling them 3/4 full.
Bake for 20 minutes or until chopstick comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack before icing.
Cookies & Cream Icing
Ingredients:
225g unsalted butter
400 – 600g icing sugar (to taste)
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup marshmallow fluff (they have this at sainsbury’s now!!)
8 Oreo cookies, smashed to bits
Beat the butter, then add in the sugar gradually and mix well.
Add milk and vanilla and continue to mix.
Once this much is to your taste (a basic vanilla buttercream), stir in the fluff with a spatula.
Add the bashed Oreos until the texture is even.
This will go through a piping bag, but you’ll need the Oreos to be very fine! Otherwise, just use a knife. The tops of these cupcakes are a bit fragile and the icing is sticky, so take your time and make sure the cupcakes are fully cooled.
Add more Oreos on top if you like. How could you not like?
xlovesx
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