Oreo Cupcakes

You know when you stumble on something, and it’s so freakin’ amazing that you can’t believe it? So you try it again and it’s still freakin’ amazing? (get your mind out of the gutter)

I’m talking about these cupcakes. The first time I made them, they were amazing. But they were SO good that I thought it was kind of a fluke, so I tried them again. Nope, still freakin’ amazing. So, I tried again and again, and still the same. At some point you just have to accept that your first instincts were correct…these are freakin’ amazing.

But that doesn’t stop me from keeping on trying and checking. You know, just in case.

Difficulty: easy
Print

Ingredients

Cupcakes

· 1 cup sugar

· 2 cups flour

· ¼ cup dark chocolate cocoa powder (you can use regular cocoa powder if you don’t have dark, but dark will give you a more intense flavor)

· 2 t baking soda

· 1 cup mayonnaise (yes, mayo – work with me here)

· 1 cup hot water

· 2 t vanilla

Frosting

· 2 cups crushed Oreo cookies (instructions below)

· 2 sticks butter, softened to room temperature

· 2 ¼ cups powdered sugar

· 2 T vanilla (note the capital T)

· 1 T milk

Directions

Mix the sugar, flour, cocoa powder and baking soda in a bowl, until they’re pretty well integrated. Next, add the mayo, hot water and vanilla and mix until well blended, usually a couple minutes. Literally, that’s it for mixing – it’s super easy.

Next put the batter into the cupcake cups that are in the muffin tin, fill each one about 2/3 to ¾ of the way up.

Anyone who has read any of my other recipes knows my two big rules about cupcakes – you don’t have to follow them, but you should because I know what I’m talking about:

1. Don’t cook the cupcakes directly in the muffin/cupcake tin. They can be a mess to clean and it’s just a pain in the butt. Always use cupcake cups – put them in the tin first, THEN pour in the batter. It makes cleanup a whole lot easier (try getting all the cooked batter out of every corner of a muffin tin – it’s annoying!)

2. If you’re having a party or anything where people are more grazing than sitting down for a formal dessert, always make mini cupcakes rather than standard size ones. This will require you to have that kind of pan and I know it goes against my minimalist approach to kitchen utensils, but I find I use mine all the time. The same people who won’t eat a cupcake because “oh, it’s too much” will turn around and eat 8 to 10 mini cupcakes. Because…psychology.

Bake at 350° for about 16-20 minutes. Cool them to a wire rack, and let them cool completely before you frost them otherwise the frosting melts just a little and slides off the cupcakes.

Frosting

I love my mini food processor. It chops the hell out of things and that makes me happy. What you need to do is take the Oreos and grid them in there until they’re almost like coarse sand or really chunky salt. My food processor doesn’t fit enough Oreos in there to make 2 cups in one go-round, so I just keep filling it until I have enough cookie dust.

If you don’t have a mini food processor, don’t worry – you can get by without it. What you do is take a large zip-close sandwich bag, put a bunch of Oreos in and close it almost all the way (add photos). Not quite all the way because you don’t want to trap air in there, but most of the way so that the cookies don’t come spilling out. The, take a rolling pin back and forth over the cookies until they’re pulverized. Pretend they’re your enemies and they Must. Be. Defeated.

Regardless of how you get your 2 cups of Oreo crumbs, set them aside. Next take the butter and mix with a hand mixer that until its smooth. Add in the sugar, vanilla and milk and mix again until everything is completely combined. Finally, stir in the 2 cups of Oreo crumbs, and be sure to lick the spoon when you’re done because, yum.

Spoon the icing into a large sandwich bag (you can totally use the same one that you used to crush the Oreos in, assuming it didn’t tear when you did that…defeating enemies and all).

oreo cupcakes 2

Close the top except for a little bit to let air escape, similar to what you did before. Then, take a scissors and snip off a corner. Squeeze slowly from the top, and you’ve made yourself a pastry bag that a) doesn’t need to be cleaned, and b) since there’s always a little left in the bag, provides an additional snacking opportunity.

Ice the cupcakes, and refrigerate so that the icing hardens a little bit.