Oreo Truffle Stuffed Cupcakes.......and Salad.

For this weeks kitchen adventure we decided to experiment with a cupcake idea that's been up in the air for a while now - oreo stuffed cupcakes. It's one of those things that sound brilliant, but you never get around to actually doing. This one's been on our list for a year now, and I'm happy to say we finally got to it. After looking at a bunch of recipes on pinterest, we finally found one to our liking. The recipe varied, as it called for stuffed oreo truffles, which added a nice twist.

The ingredients

Oreo Truffles
1 pack of Oreos
2/3 block of cream cheese
4 tablespoons of vanilla frosting

Start by crushing all the oreos until they're fine. We don't have a food processor so we used a blender. After crushing your oreos, mix in the rest of the ingredients. We also didn't want to go through the trouble of making 4 tablespoons of vanilla frosting, so we just used the pink buttercream frosting out of the can that you see pictured above. The frosting isn't really necessary for the truffles, it just adds a bit of sweetness. You could get away by adding a little bit of sugar, or maybe some cream if the truffles are too dry.

                We love to get our hands dirty so we mixed it all the good ol' fashioned way

After mixing everything, roll them into little balls. Bigger if you like em balls big.

This is how ours came out

Cupcakes

3/4 cup softened butter
3 large eggs
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups milk

Using a mixer cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, making sure each is well incorporated followed by the vanilla extract. In another mixing bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together. Add half the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix. After the first half has been well mixed into the batter, at the second half. Lastly, add the milk.

This is how the batter should look once done

Now... if you have reached this part of the blog, congratulations. If you were somehow able to restrain yourself from eating all those deliciously rich and sinful oreo truffles, give yourself a pat on the back.

Line your cupcake tin, and fill each liner 1/4 full with batter then add the truffle in the center. Then add just enough batter to cover the truffles.

Ready to go in the oven!

Make sure you preheated your oven to 350 beforehand, because we forgot to and had to wait around before we could pop the cupcakes in. The cupcakes should be in the oven for 17-20 minutes. Ours took 18 minutes. When in doubt, rely on the trusty ol' tooth pick test.

Fresh baked cupcakes coming out of the oven!

Oreo Buttercream
3/4 cup softened butter
1/3 block cream cheese
4 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup crushed oreos (leftover from truffles)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream

For the frosting, simply cream together the butter and cream cheese and then add the powdered sugar one cup at a time until everything is well mixed together and you end up with a very fluffy frosting. Add the vanilla extract and the heavy cream. Add more or less cream depending on your desired frosting consistency. Lastly, mix the powdered oreos in.

Now here's where things get interesting... When we got to the last step (adding the powdered oreos) we realized we didn't have enough. As we had already washed the blender beforehand, we decided to be lazy and just put the oreos in a ziplock bag and crush it by hand. As a result, we ended up with some chunkier pieces in our frosting which we didn't think was a big deal...WRONG. When we went to pipe our icing, we quickly realized the chunks were getting stuck and blocking frosting from coming out of the piping tip and heres what we ended up with:

Piping disaster

After a few attempts of trying to unclog and "save" the piping bag and frosting, we gave up and decided to just use a spatula to place the frosting. It definitely took longer, but what can ya say... we had to improvise. After all, it wouldn't be much of a kitchen adventure if something didn't go wrong!

After baking the cupcakes, we began to make dinner. Knowing that dessert would be rich, sweet and luxurious we decided on a light dinner: salad. After the piping disaster, we were glad to be making an "easy" dinner. We tossed some spinach, strawberries, goat cheese, chicken breast and balsamic vinaigrette together. We seasoned the chicken breast with salt, pepper, garlic powder, rosemary, parmesan and herbs and tossed it in the oven (400F) for 20-30 minutes turning half way through.

Our final meal

Oreo Truffle Stuffed Cupcakes

The cupcakes were beyond delicious, and officially have the Hammer and Potato seal of approval! Try this recipe out and see for yourself!

Kitchen Adventure: SUCCESS

Recipe from: www.kailleyskitchen.com