Delectables with Dan Presents: The Bobble & Squeak Cupcake!

I've done a few inspired by cupcakes in my time, but I think this has to be one of my favourites. It was inspired by the colourful personality and creations of a talented woman, Roz. She makes her own really cool knit beanies, neck wraps and more. You can visit her shop down below. I wanted to do something that captures not only her personality but her creations as well, that's when it hit me; chocolate chip cookie dough filled cupcakes! I have two versions of this, a "regular" and a vegan one. This one will be the non-vegan one, that one will be up later in the week. With this recipe, I'm using a yellow cupcake, but you can easily make it a chocolate one. This is a from scratch recipe, but you can use a box mixture if you desire, following the baking instructions on the box. 

1/4 cup salted butter softened

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup sugar**

3/4 cup milk room temperature

2 large eggs room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

**If you're worried about it getting too sweet, use Stevia to cut down on sugar or any other sweetener of choice.

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a cupcake holder with cupcake wrappers. In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter, sugar and vegetable oil together until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add in the milk, vanilla and eggs, beat on high until well combined. Add in the salt and baking powder. ix well. Allow batter to sit for roughly 5 minutes, give a stir to make sure you don't have any powder bubbles in the mixture. Using a ladle spoon batter into the cups, filling them 3/4 of the way full. Put into bake for 15-20 minutes. They will be golden brown in colour. Remove from oven and chill cupcakes in the fridge; you should allow them to sit on a cooling rack for 15 minutes or so before putting them into the icebox.

No-Bake Cookie Dough!

While the cupcakes are baking up, you're going to need to do something with your hands, so why not make the filling. You don't want to make a cookie dough with eggs or what I call a must bake dough for the centre, because it won't really work. 

You Will Need: 

1/2c (1 stick) butter

3/4c light brown sugar 

1 teaspoon vanilla essence 

1/2 teaspoon sea salt 

1c. flour 

2 tablespoons milk 

Cream together the butter and sugar until they are nice and fluffy, mix in the vanilla and salt, blend well. I like to use an electric mixer when I make cookie doughs, regardless of being vegan or not, it creates a smoother cookie in the end I think and we really are aiming for a creamy, soft centre. Add in the flour and mix well; the dough will be crumbly, that's normal. Add in the milk and mix well. Hand mix in the mini chocolate chips. If the dough is too wet, add a small amount of dough until you are able to form small balls. Lay the balls on a cookie sheet that has a piece of baking parchment on it, wrap with cling film and freeze. The balls need to be small because they are going inside cupcakes, so a little under one inch. 

Remove the balls from the freezer a half hour before you're going to put them in your cupcakes so they begin to soften as you prepare the icing. Or you could just leave them in the freezer for about an hour. You are going to have to core the cupcake to put the cookie dough ball inside. Not sure what that is? No worries I'll tell ya. I'm not about to give away all my secrets in this blog, but this one I'm happy to share with you guys. You can use a cupcake corer (yes, they have them!) or an apple corer to pop out a little centrepiece of the cake to allow you to carefully push the cookie dough ball into the cupcake. If you don't have either of those, you can do what I did; take a paring knife and carefully cut a circle in the top of the cupcake. Work the knife around the centre, pushing carefully then you can pop that little piece of cake out no problem. I'm not going to reuse the bit of cake that we pulled out so you can nibble on them or do mini cake bites with any of the leftover icings that you have. Once you have cored out all of the cupcakes, its time to fill the holes! That sounded filthy and now my mind is wandering...Great. Anyway, taking the small dough balls, you want to carefully push them into the hole. Be careful not to smash the cupcake. If your balls are too big (must resist the urge to laugh) wait until they soften a bit more to break them up and make smaller balls to fit. Make sure that there is no dough oozing around the top of the hole. 

Now we're going to make some icing! If you want to use store-bought icing, just get a creamy vanilla or a whipped vanilla. Makes really no difference as long as it's a vanilla icing. Do note that if you are using store-bought icing, you will need one tub of icing per colour. I guess you could use chocolate if you wanted, but you'd not be able to create the colour swirl combo that we're going for with this cupcake. We want a vibrant pink and an icy blue colour for the icings so you will need a bright pink and a bright blue food dye of your choice. Add 1-2 teaspoons of dye (depending on your brand) to the icing in separate bowls and blend with an electric mixer. I like to use one of them because it ensures the dye is really blended into the icing. If you need to use a bit more die to achieve the colours pictured, do so. Fill the icing bags a little over half full and begin to ice your cupcakes. You can use any style of tip that you want, but I went with a large star tip. Work in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion, carefully applying equal amounts of pressure to squeeze the icing out; you don't want any blowouts. It's important to keep a steady hand while doing this. Continue the same process until you've iced all the cupcakes. Before the icing settles too much, you want to sprinkle the top of the cupcakes with vibrant and colourful sprinkles! And once you've done that, you're done! 

Let's cut one of these bad boys open so you can see what they look like on the inside! I made a set for a co-worker of mine and they were gone within the hour that I brought them in. I'm glad people are enjoying my baking creations. You can see as the cookie dough as softened when you bite or cut into it the doughy centre almost oozes out creating a nice sweet and creamy taste. I can't wait to explore more different types of centres as the year goes on. Who knows? This may inspire some Dickcember baking ideas! 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Bobbleandsqueakshop

Her products are made with wool and I know that's not very vegan of me but I got one before I transitioned to veganism and I'm happy to share her business because she's been kind to me; not many people are. If you disagree with her usage of wool products, please refrain from being unkind or commenting your personal views. Thanks.