Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cookies and Cream

I love looking at cake things online, and one things I’ve noticed is that the internet loves red velvet anything.  Like, loooooves it.  If the internet was a 10-year-old girl, you could say that it doesn’t just like red velvet, it like-likes it.  In my travels through the ether of the information superhighway a few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to do something red velvet, in this case I ended up with red velvet cupcakes.

These particular cupcakes sort of just happened, and they’ve got a lot going on.  I wanted to make red velvet cupcakes.  However, I’d also bought a package of Oreos and a couple of bricks of cream cheese earlier in the week, and I wanted to use those as well.  If I didn’t use them up, I feared the Beard might come home and find me camped out on the couch, binge-watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix and dipping cookies into the cream cheese like some sort of dessert-lover’s ultimate “chips and dip” fantasy.

My thought process went like “red velvet cupcakes would be good with cream cheese frosting… but Oreo cookies would be good with cream cheese frosting… let’s do red velvet cupcakes with cookies and cream frosting.”  Easy enough, but that wouldn’t use up the cookies.  I decided to take things up a notch and bring the cookies and cream into the red velvet with some chocolate truffles.

More Than A Mouthful

I made the truffles the same way you’ll see them made all over the web, nothing but crushed up cookies and a block of softened cream cheese.  I’d never had a truffle like this, and at this point I don’t understand how I’ve survived this long without having one.  As usual, I had to hide any remaining truffle mix from myself, purely out of fear that I’d just add them to my cookies and cream cheese fantasy and create an enormous bowl of regret.  When the Beard tried one when he came home from work and told me, “Yeah, I’m going to need another hundred or so of these, and I’ll need you to pop them into my mouth in a continuous stream.”  I skipped the part of coating the truffles with melted chocolate and took things to the next level and coated them in a thick layer of cupcake instead.

Ok, ok.  I just jammed the truffles into the cupcakes.  As we used to say in high school, same difference.

Now we’ve got these sweet little cupcakes with a chocolate cookie truffle inside, and what better way to top them than by covering everything with a cream cheese frosting with MORE CRUSHED COOKIES.  You end up with a sweet cupcake with slightly sweet surprise in its center, covered with a sweet and tangy frosting on top.  Plus, as a bonus, the frosting recipe makes A LOT OF FROSTING.  Go wild with your cupcakes and pipe that frosting up high, double your cupcake recipe and frost them with a normal amount, or just freeze the rest.  You can’t lose.

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Red Velvet Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

It's not just the title that's a mouthful!  These sweet little delights are red velvet cupcakes with cookies and cream cheese buttercream frosting and a hidden truffle treat inside!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword buttercream, cookies and cream, cream cheese, cupcake, red velvet

Prep Time 45 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Servings 24

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• ½ cup butter softened
• 1½ cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsps unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2½ cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• red food coloring

Cookies and Cream Truffles

• 1 package Oreo cookies 14oz package
• 8 oz Neufchâtel cream cheese softened

Cookies and Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

• 8 oz Neufchâtel cream cheese softened
• ¾ cup butter softened
• 2 lbs powdered sugar
• 1½ tsps vanilla extract
• 4 Oreo cookies, crushed

Instructions

Cookies and Cream Truffles

1. Crush two rows of the Oreo cookies in a food processor.  You can also use a plastic freezer bag and a rolling pin if you're really hardcore.

2. Combine cookie crumbs with the softened block of cream cheese until evenly mixed.  Roll teaspoon-sized scoops of mixture into balls and place on a plate covered with wax paper, then chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Cupcakes

1. Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the eggs on at a time, beating well between each one.   Beat in the vanilla and mix until combined.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk or sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture in small parts, alternating with the yogurt, mixing well between each addition.  With the last portion of yogurt added, add the vinegar and mix the batter completely.  Add the food coloring until the batter is as red as you want it to be.

3. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners to make things really easy.  Fill each cup roughly halfway, then place a cookie truffle in the center and push down slightly - they don't need to be covered, the frosting will hide them.  Bake in a 350°F oven for 20-25 minutes; test for doneness at the 20-minute mark and adjust cooking time as needed.

4. Cool cupcakes in pan for 5 minutes, then remove and allow to completely cool on a wire rack before frosting.  I was able to get 24 cupcakes out of this.

Cookies and Cream Cheese Buttercream

1. Cream butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl.  Slowly incorporate the powdered sugar until the mixture is creamy before adding more sugar.  The mixture will start to get stiff towards the end.  Add the vanilla and cookie crumbs and mix until well combined.  Frost or pipe onto the cupcakes.

The Tart

The Tart likes to eat, cook, and bake things.  She eats to work out, and she works out to be able to eat.