Cookies in your cupcake!

Oreos are a favorite cookie at my house. Since I was young, I’ve enjoyed the sweet treat with a glass of milk and in recent years have become quite fond of Oreo milkshakes. I’ve always loved making them at home for my kids, combining frozen yogurt and skim milk with the crushed cookies and trying not to feel guilty when I make one for myself as well.

What is it about that combination of cookie and cream that’s so yummy?

For the last year or so, I’ve wanted to make Oreo cupcakes but didn’t get around to it until two weeks ago. I wanted to make something new for a family dinner we were invited to and decided to try a cupcake recipe.

I’ve read many versions of Oreo cupcakes, and there are any number of ways you can make them. Some have cream inserted in the middle, others have chocolate frosting sprinkled with cookie crumbs. Some use a variety of chocolate cake mixes, others use yellow. Some bakers place a whole cookie inside the filled cupcake holder (vertical) before baking

For my cupcakes, I chose milk chocolate cake mix made with Oreo pudding. I put half of an Oreo in the bottom of each cupcake liner before filing with batter. I frosted my cupcakes with a can of whipped vanilla frosting mixed with Oreo cookie crumbs. They were so yummy! In fact, I made them again the next day to take to our church Bible school kickoff.

I especially liked the cookie at the bottom of the cupcake. When you remove the cupcake from the liner, you see the firm cookie at the bottom, and it adds a nice crunch to the cupcake, I think. I also like the cookie crumbs that are already in the Oreo pudding. But if you can’t find the Oreo pudding, plain vanilla should work fine or just make the cupcakes by the package instructions and omit the pudding altogether.

These cupcakes were a real treat. They would also be fun to make with seasonal Oreos that have colorful filling.

I feel sure I’ll be making this recipe again!


Oreo Cupcakes

• 1 box milk chocolate cake mix
• 1 package (4-serving size) instant Oreo pudding mix (I had to buy the larger size and divide it)
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup milk (I used skim)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• Oreo cookies (or another brand of chocolate sandwich cookies)
• Can of vanilla frosting

Fill two 12-count muffin pans with cupcake liners and place one half of an Oreo into each liner. Leave the filling on the cookies.

Pour cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, milk and oil in a bowl and mix for 2 minutes with electric mixer. Divide batter between muffin cups. Bake according to cake mix box directions.

While the cupcakes cook, crumble 6-8 cookies with your hands, a chopper or in food processor to make coarse crumbles. Place frosting in a bowl and mix in cookie crumbs.

Once cupcakes have cooked and cooled, add frosting and top with more cookie crumbs if desired.

Celebrate your graduate!

As graduation day approaches for so many high school students (including my own daughter, Anna), I thought it would be fun to share an adorable and easy cupcake idea.

It was Anna who first saw this idea several months ago on Pinterest, and we decided we should make them for her graduation.

It’s a very simple process.

For starters, you make a batch of cupcakes (we used a mix) and frost them. Then you place an unwrapped miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in the middle and top it with a square from a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Use a dab of frosting so the chocolate will stay in place. (Break the rectangular piece to make the square.) That makes the cap.

To make the tassel, put an M&M Mini in the middle of the chocolate square and use a tube of frosting to make the tassel strings dangle from the M&M.

You can adapt them as needed, of course. For instance, the frosting could be dyed the same color of the tassel — both to reflect the school’s color. And the tassel can be any color you like,

The cupcake holder can also vary to match school colors as well.

It’s fun to make your own goodies for special occasions, especially when they are this easy.

Graduation cupcakes To make this dessert, bake and frost the number of cupcakes needed. Decide on colors. Purchase miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, M&M Minis, Hershey bars (I bought the miniature bars) and a tube of colorful frosting. Read the accompanying story for directions.

Colors of the rainbow

After all the sweets I had around Christmas, I promised myself not to eat anything that resembled a dessert until February, at least. But I broke that promise after my daughter made a batch of tie-dye cupcakes before her school break was over.

A few years ago, I had seen a number of recipes and photos for rainbow or tie-dye cakes and thought they were so pretty with their brilliant red, blue, green, purple and yellow layers. But I never made them. It seemed like too much trouble.

Anna is much more adventurous. She called me from home one morning and asked if I cared if she cooked. I told her it was fine as long as she cleaned up the mess. (That’s my standard answer for many things in life.)

Later that morning, she showed up at the office with a container of very pretty cupcakes that she made from a lemon supreme cake mix she doctored with food coloring: red, green, orange and yellow.

The cupcakes were very pretty, and the colors were so brilliant that you could see the swirled designs through the thin cupcake paper. I bit into mine and held it out to admire the pretty patterns that are unique to each cupcake.

So how did she make them? She said it’s easy, but a little more time-consuming than a regular cupcake.

Using a cake mix, make the batter as directed on the package. Choose a light colored mix such as yellow or lemon. Take out the food coloring you want to use and get an equal number of small bowls. Divide the batter among the bowls. Add drops of dye and stir, repeating the process until the batter is the shade you want.

Then spoon the different colors into each cupcake holder (with a cupcake liner inside) and don’t stir the batter — just drop the colored batter in around the edges and middle of the cupcake liner. You could do this is a layer cake as well.

Bake the cupcakes as directed on the box.

Anna covered half of her cupcakes with vanilla frosting and left the other half without frosting. They were delicious both ways.

In addition to making rainbow cupcakes, wouldn’t it be fun to make themed cupcakes? You could use the colors from the two opposing teams for a Super Bowl party, for instance, or pink and red for Valentine’s and red, white and blue for a Fourth of July party.


Tie-Dye Cupcakes

• Cake mix (Use a light color mix such as yellow or lemon; make batter according to box instructions)
• Paper cupcake liners
• Various food dyes
• Frosting (if desired)

Choose the dye colors for your cupcakes and divide batter into the same number of small bowls.

Add drops of food dye into each bowl and stir to make the colors you want.

Spoon batter into muffin pan filled with cupcake liners. Spoon batter around the edges and in the middle and do not stir.

Bake according to box instructions.

Frost, if desired, when cool.

St. Patrick’s Day treats

I’ve never been a big fan of food colorings, thanks in part to an incident from my childhood when my sister, Susan, and I dyed our milk blue. I still shudder when I think of swallowing that royal blue milk. Suffice it to say that neither of us drank our milk that night, and we never tried that experiment again.

So when thinking of a St. Patrick’s-themed recipe for this column, I surely did not want to suggest adding green food coloring to your mashed potatoes or biscuit dough as a way to bring a bit of the holiday spirt to your dinner table.

Instead, I propose adding some pistachio pudding to a cake mix and making some green cupcakes!

I’ve made a number of cakes where I’ve added vanilla or chocolate pudding mix to the cake batter, but I had never tried pistachio until this week. In fact, I guess I have never even used pistachio pudding for anything because I was surprised when white powder poured out of the envelope when I added it to my mixing bowl. But as soon as the liquid ingredients hit the bowl, a beautiful shade of green emerged.

I opted not to use cupcake holders for these cupcakes because I assumed they would be a pretty shade of green and I wanted to show off the green in the photograph and to my family. They are not a beautiful shade of green on the outside, more of a brown cupcake with a green tint. But once you bite into the cupcake, more green shows.

The cupcake itself is sweet and very good, but it’s not much different from other cupcakes I’ve made with a yellow cake mix. But it is green and would be fun for St. Patrick’s Day treat.

To make your cupcake even more festive, put green sprinkles on top once you’ve frosted it. I use both whipped topping and a chocolate glaze for mine.


Pistachio Cupcakes

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• Pistachio pudding mix (3.4 oz. size)
• 1⁄2 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 2 cupcake pans by lining or spraying with baking spray.

Pour all ingredients into a bowl. Mix on high for 2 minutes until all ingredients are blended.

Pour into cupcake pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

Frost and decorate after the cupcakes have cooled.

Makes 24 cupcakes.