I had last night is what I considered a baking FAIL, which is not normal for me. I'd like to believe I'm a decent baker. However, I know I am prone to mistakes and failures, with the occasional recipe quite literally crashing and burning. For the most part, though, I can hold my own in the baking realm.
I first encountered this cupcake a few weeks ago when a lady at church made them for a small group leaders meeting. It was like discovering a whole new world when I first tasted this cupcake. Out-of-this-world good. Being from Ohio, we love our Buckeyes, and I'm not talking about the football team (although we love them, too, we are just having an unstable relationship at the moment). I'm talking about the chocolate peanut butter candies. These cupcakes were like eating a cake version of those Buckeyes.
So, I got the recipe from my friend and I morphed into a domestic goddess last night and decided to give the recipe a try. The general idea is that it's a yellow cake mix with peanut butter cookie dough in the middle. Sounds simple enough, right? That's what I thought.
I mix them up, stick the cookie dough in the center, and slide them into the oven. Twenty-three minutes later I'm wondering where I went wrong. My friend's cupcakes definitely didn't look like this. They overflowed the edges a little bit, which is fine. I can deal with that. But then when they began to cool, they started to collapse. And then the center got bigger and bigger until I was left with a gaping hole right in the middle of my cupcake - where, in theory, the peanut butter cookie dough should have filled up the space. Yeah, not so much. They ended up looking like donuts. It was like the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark goes to slice the turkey - it looks so great and so amazing and then he cuts into and the entire thing deflates. That's how this felt.
So, I'm not sure what in the world I did to botch this one up, but I am going to have to call up the reinforcements and see what my strategy should be for next time. I mean, they tasted great and I'll definitely still eat them, they just look terrible.
I included the recipe below, which is from The Cake Mix Doctor Returns cookbook. I hope yours turn out better than mine.
INGREDIENTS
24 paper liners for cupcake pans
1 package plain yellow cake mix
3 tablespoons vanilla instant pudding mix
1 cup reduced fat sour cream
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 package (16.5 oz) refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough, chilled
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners and set the pans aside.
Place the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, milk, oil, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down teh side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes longer, scraping down the sides of the bowl again as needed. The batter should look well blended.
Set aside about 3/4 cup of the cupcake batter before filling the cupcake pans. Using the rest of the batter, spoon or scoop a heaping 1/4 cup of batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it two thirds of the way full. (You will get between 22 and 24 cupcakes;remove empty liners, if any.)
Unwrap the cookie dough and slice the log lengthwise into four pieces. Then cut each piece into 6 even chunks. Place a chunk of cookie dough on top of each cupcake and push it down into the batter. Top each piece of cookie dough with about 1 teaspoon of the reserved cupcake batter.
Place the pans in the oven and bake the cupcakes until they are golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a finger, 18-23 minutes. Remove the pans from oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans and place on wire racks to cool for 15 more minutes before frosting.
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