Chocolate Cupcakes with Cookie Dough Frosting and a Failed Experiment

They look normal, right?
But look how much it sticks! And look at the holes in that cake!! The flavor was okay but it stuck completely to the wrapper and tasted like sponge cake. I guess I have a long way before I can start making recipes from scratch...but it might have been just because I overbaked it. I baked these cupcakes for 20 minutes, but I next time I'll try around 17 (with other changes to the recipe, and changes to the preparation like putting the jam closer to the top...and the sprinkles were okay as a failure-cupcake, but if I am gonna work on this longer, I don't want them!).

Surprisingly, after refridgerating these for a while and re-trying them, the wrapper came off completely...which was good, but the cake was a little too dense, so I probably DID overbake them.

Anyway, on to the main part of this post. I wanted to bake something for my mom to take to work, and I also wanted to try and find out exactly what made the Pinkabella Cookie-Dough Cupcakes the "best cupcake ever" (according to my brother). For the Chocolate Cupcake recipe, I used Ghiradelli's Grand Fudge Cake recipe again that I used for Steven's Panda Cake. For making it into cupcakes I baked them in a cupcake tin for 17 minutes. They came out soft but were definitely baked. That came out to about 18 cupcakes.



For the frosting, I didn't have as many mini chocolate chips as the recipe called for, and had to chop up a few larger ones.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Frosting
Recipe from jamieanne

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mini chocolate chips

In a bowl mix together flour, baking soda and salt. In another bowl blend together the butter and sugars. Once fully blended, add the milk and vanilla. Then, gradually add the flour mixture to the wet mixture; stir well. Complete by folding in chocolate chips.


I didn't try them, but my brother said they were pretty good:
Still, nothing compared to Pinkabella's cupcakes:

I would definitely make sure I have lots of mini chocolate-chips on hand next time, or well, put about half a cup instead of a whole cup in there.