Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes (Cupcake of the Month #13)

Cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies are both wonderful things.  They become truly excellent when combined.

Yes, that's a little itty bitty cookie on top of that frosting.  And there's a surprise inside, too.

This was a truly multi-step cupcake, as you have to not only make the cake batter, but also the cookie dough and the vanilla frosting.  And I have to tell you something up front about the cookies: the recipe lies.  10 minutes is way too long to bake the little 1 and 1/2 inch cookies.  Mine were close to burned and nearly inedible.  I'd say 5-6 minutes is more on the mark.

Anyway...

Grape-Filled Cookies (The 5th Sweet of Christmas)

Are you ready for possibly the most challenging cookie ever?  This is my Everest.  This is my Waterloo.  This is my "coconut cream pie of cookies."  (I'll get to that reference in a later post.)

But, if you take the challenge and are willing to deal with the possibility of crazy gooey oozy grape mess on your cookie sheets, you'll be delighted with the final result.  I promise.

I am Thankful For.... Chocolate Cookies

A couple weeks ago, Bakerella unveiled yet another recipe for some scrumptious cookies - Dark Chocolate Chip Comfort Cookies, to be precise.  I was hooked and simply HAD to make the attempt.

So in addition to that super easy cheesy cornbread and a chili recipe (still in the "tweaking" stage), I decided to whip up a double batch of these super delicious cookies to take to a chili cook-off a friend of ours was hosting.  I didn't have any dark chocolate chips, because I'd used my bag to make a batch of triple chocolate chip cookies for my brother-in-law's birthday, so I substituted half a bag of white chocolate chips and half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

They were still positively awesome, and I followed it up a week later by making another double batch, WITH dark chocolate chips, for my staff's "pig out day" - our big pot luck lunch we do on our second day of parent/teacher conferences.

Before I continue with the awesome pictures of these cookies in process, I must give you all a word of warning.  This cookie dough is THICK.  How thick, you ask?  Well, between these cookies and the triple chocolate chip cookies I made in October, I now have no more rubber spatulas.  Because the acrylic handles snapped when I was trying to scrape the bowls and fold in the chocolate chips.

That's right.  Both my spatulas are cookie casualties.  So I suggest you skip the heartache and just use a big sturdy metal spoon instead.

Anyway, on to the awesomeness.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Just a quick post tonight to report on a cookie triumph.

My brother-in-law's birthday is this Thursday, and I know he's got a big weak spot for chocolate chip cookies (as does my husband.... and father-in-law... must be genetic).  So I decided to pull out all the stops and make some triple chocolate chip cookies, based on this recipe for Triple Chip Cookies from Bakerella.

Bakerella's recipe calls for white chocolate, milk chocolate, and butterscotch chips.  I went with white, milk and dark chocolate, only because I sadly discovered that I had less than a 1/3 of a cup of butterscotch chips in my pantry.

This is probably due to the fact that I'd gotten into the habit of sprinkling a handful on my ice cream this summer, in spite of the fact that I'd purchased said butterscotch chips specifically for these cookies.

In any case, I substituted the dark chocolate chips for the butterscotch and kept everything else in Bakerella's recipe the same.

The hubby and I did some quality control.

They met with our exacting standards of quality.

The only thing I did slightly different from Bakerella, other than the chip substitution, was use a smaller cookie scoop.  Mine has only a 1-inch diameter, so I actually ended up with 5 1/2 dozen cookies.  Two dozen are slated (after a little bit of pleading and some puppy dog eyes) for my husband's project meeting at work tomorrow.  I'll probably save the extra six for us to munch on.  The rest are heading to my bro-in-law's and will hopefully arrive on time for his birthday.

I leave it up to him if he wants to share with his roommates.