Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake

In my office we take turns providing cake for our co-workers on their birthdays. It was my turn this week and I knew my co-worker loves cookies, hence my decision to make this lovely cake. While this cake is quite time consuming, it is well worth the effort. It is absolutely delicious and there are ways to simplify the recipe so that it is not as time consuming as the complete original, shared here.

There are four components to this cake (recipes are linked):

1. Baked chocolate chip cookies (mini sized) - you should use your personal favorite
2. No bake cookie dough filling -  (recipe below)
3. Frosting (I used store-bought vanilla frosting, which is what I prefer)
4. Cake (boxed cake works just fine too, I used boxed chocolate and yellow to help simplify)

Cookie Dough Filling Recipe:

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

6 Tbsp light brown sugar, packed

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

7 oz sweetened condensed milk

½ tsp vanilla extract

¼ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips 

Directions:

1. Combine the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. B

2. Beat in the flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla until incorporated and smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips. 

3. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the mixture has firmed up a bit, about an hour.

Cake-Assembly directions:

1. Bake mini chocolate chip cookies according to your most favorite recipe, making sure to cut the baking time since the cookies should be about half the size of a normal cookie. Let them cool and then set aside for assembly. 

2. Prepare the cookie dough filling according to directions above. Cool for an hour. Remove from the fridge and form small balls of cookie dough, placing them on wax paper, you will need enough cookie dough balls to make a layer in the cake. Place cookie dough balls back in the fridge to cool for at least an hour and/or until assembly. 

3. Prepare frosting according to frosting directions. Set aside. I used store bought frosting, which worked plenty good for me. The original recipe recommended using buttercream frosting, I used vanilla.

4. Bake cakes (you need at least 2 layers, so either 2 - 9x13 or 2 - round cakes) according to cake directions, allow them to cool before assembly. I used box cake because frankly they taste plenty good to me and it saves time in measuring, etc.

5. Place the bottom layer of the cake on cake platter. Use about 1/3 of the frosting to fully cover the bottom layer. Remove the cookie dough balls from the fridge and add them to the frosting to create a layer with cookie dough balls (the cookie dough balls do not need to touch but they should be evenly spread out so there are equal amounts of cookie dough in every bite). You may want to flatten the cookie dough a bit and maybe even be sure there is an even surface of cookie dough and frosting.

6. Place the top layer on top. Frost cake with a crumb layer, allow it to cool and then go for your final layer of frosting. Decorate the cake using the mini chocolate chip cookies. You may also choose to garnish with chocolate chips! Serve and enjoy!

 Recipes adapted from SomethingShinyBlog and FakeGinger