Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake – yum.

Last weekend we had Sam’s family over for his mom’s birthday. Then, the following night – we headed to our friend’s house for a riveting game night for Halloween.  Which only meant one thing – I needed to make something that would work for both nights.

And by the way, I need to tell you about game night.  We headed over to Katy and Sean’s house and since I couldn’t find our favorite game (Catch Phrase) I brought Yahtzee.  Which to be honest, I have no idea how to play.  We got it as a wedding present and haven’t played it yet.  In any event, we played one round of Apples to Apples, which was good.  But then we play Mad-Gab. Oh man, our teams were boys against girls and that … was a bad idea.  Somehow the boys kicked our butts! They were able to sounds those cards out so well and just keep moving through them.  Our team, the girls (obviously) would try to sound them out, yell and shout, guess awkward answers and just generally freak out.  We were awful.  Or I should say I was awful.  But towards the end of the game, when there was no chance of us winning I realized that girls can’t play this game as a woman would.  There’s no time to think about the answer and sounds it out slowly…you just need to say it fast, and spit out your answer! And when I realized this, it was on.  I was rolling through those cards towards the end.  But, no one seems to remember that – they just remember by how much the girls lost. Ha.  But next time – next time we’ll show them!!

Back to baking! So I needed something that would last for both nights.  I had seen a recipe online with brownie mix and cookie dough, and I attempted the same thing! I had a left over box of cake mix and a can of frosting. 

So all I had to do was make the cookie dough, which was super easy.  I used a simple recipe out of one of my cookbooks

And, like I usually do, I was baking late and didn’t want to run to the store to get extra ingredients. 2-1/2 cups of flour is a lot, and I was a little worried. This is all I had

Doesn’t look like much does it? Well, I barely made it! I put 2-1/2 cups in my bowl and this is all I had left:

Coast is clear – time to keep on baking!

And first things first – I love using my crate and barrel mini-bowls! They are PERFECT for baking!

We begin with dropping our butter into the mixer, (which should be at room temperature, not fresh out of the fridge).  Let it get nice and creamy.  (The recipe calls for 1/2 cup shortening and 1/2 cup butter, but I used all butter, totally acceptable!)

Then I added my sugars and baking soda

When that gets combined, add in your eggs, incorporate them – then dry ingredients.  Oh, eggs at room temperature too!! You need to set them out a good hour or so before you start baking. Trust me, it makes a difference.  Then, tap in your remaining dry ingredients into the mixer.  Don’t forget to give the bowl a good scrape to get everything off of the sides.  (*Note, I completely forgot to scrape edges, which it totally weird for me, so – my apologies for telling you to do something and not doing it myself!)

*Chocolate chip note: I didn’t have any morsels, just left over chocolate from a previous recipe – so I just chopped them up into perfect little morsels myself!

Time for some chocolate cake.

Basically just dump the mix into a bow, add eggs, oil, and water!

Beat ingredients with a hand held mixer for a good 3 minutes.  Make sure there are no lumps and everything looks nice and smoooooth.

I then poured the cake batter into a 9×13 pan, which I did spray with a little Pam. Then the fun part! Scoop up the chocolate chip cookie dough and “plop” it randomly into the batter.  When you’re finished, you may lick the bowl.  Actually, you can lick both bowls now!

Getting excited?! Oooh yea, I know I was!

Then we pop it in the oven, and I believe I just followed the directions on the cake box.  It was probably 350 for about 23 minutes or so.  Same rule applies here – poke cake with toothpick and when it comes out with small crumbs, youre done!

It smelled so good, Kimoni wanted in on the action!

When the cake has cooled, spread your frosting. 

I had some leftover cookie dough, so I baked a giant cookie while everything was cooling, and my intention was to totally eat it – but then I had an idea.  My cookie cake needs a topping.  So I crumbled the cookie on top of the cake, and with left over chocolate, drizzled it right onto the bad boy! Oh man, I could NOT wait to eat it!

It tasted as good as it looked. And warning – not a good snack for diet-ers. Ha!

But, I noticed something almost immeadiatly…the cookie dough sunk to the bottom of my cake. And, I know why – cake mix.  I’m pretty sure the density the brownies have allow for more support – as in, they dough and batter would have been evenly distributed.  Cake batter is so thin that when the dough melted it just sank to the bottom. This didn’t affect the taste, but – aesthetically, it wasn’t the looks I was going for.  Next time – brownies will be my base. 

 

 

---