Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

I can't think of a better way to start off my blog than with a birthday cake. My darling husband turned 24 last week, and as always, I baked him a cookie cake.

I meant for the Birthday to climb up the side like that.

These are his absolute favorites, and while they aren't the most exciting thing to bake, they are always delicious. I make these for his birthdays, special occasions and when he's stressed. His family always buys store-bought cookie cakes for special occasions and I think next time I'm going to offer to bake one. Those things are gross.

Moving on...since I've been making these for the past two years, I've gotten the recipe down pretty well. However, we did just move in to a new apartment and the oven...is odd. I'm still getting used to the temperature variations in it. So this cake is a little browner than I would like it to be, but still tasty.

This is the original recipe that I base everything off: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/giant-chocolate-chip-cookie/

However, I've had to make a few tweaks and changes to get the cake to how I like it. Because who likes walnuts in their cookie cakes? No one, that's who.

Here is how I make them

Ingredients:

Butter not included, because it was in the microwave. I also forgot the eggs. It's my first post. Sorry.

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F and lightly grease a 14 in round pizza pan. 

2. If you're like me, you don't soften your butter ahead of time because that requires advance planning. Go ahead and soften those sticks up in the microwave. The best way I've found to do it is 7 seconds at a time, turning the butter each interval.

3. Beat together your newly softened butter and the sugars in a bowl until light and fluffy. I use my stand mixer, but you can do it by hand as well and get in some arm exercise.

4. Add the eggs, vanilla and milk to the batter. It's going to be very soupy now, much more so than when you make just regular chocolate chip cookies.

5. Mix in the salt, baking soda and half the flour, gradually adding in the rest of the flour until it is all incorporated. It will be lighter and stickier than regular cookie dough because of the extra milk.

 

This is what the consistency should look like once it's all mixed together.

6. Stir in the the chocolate chips by hand, unless you want to scrap chocolate chip chunks off of the bottom of your stand mixer.

Your end result.

7. Place some of the dough in the middle of your pizza pan.

I have no counter space, hence doing this on the stove.

8. Spread the dough out towards the edges, adding more dough as needed. Make sure to leave about 1-2 inches around the edge of your pan to leave room for the cookie to spread. You will not use all of the dough.

Like this!

9. Make sure to build the dough up higher around the outside so that it spreads easier and doesn't burn.

Hopefully you can tell that the outside is a little higher than the center.

10. Bake for 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven. I baked mine for 25, because the back of my oven gets much hotter than the front, and I forgot to rotate it so I had to use the extra time to make sure it was all cooked. That's when the milk comes in handy for keeping the cookie soft. It's a little more brown that I usually like and a little crispier around the edges, but those are about the only differences.

11. Now...there's the matter of that leftover dough. You can bake it into cookies, but they will be thin and crispy. Not necessarily bad, just not my style of cookie. Or...you can not bake it and do with it what you want. I'm not going to tell you which one I did.

There's about a cup leftover.

Enough for about 6 cookies. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 375. If you want.

12. Now comes the fun part. Frosting! I asked my husband what kind of frosting he wanted, and he said "The white kind". Which means this kind:

Yummy chemical goodness

Canned frosting. Something about it with cookie cake is just so right. And only the white flavor, not the vanilla. If you're feeling really fancy, you can do a combination of chocolate and white, like they do at the stores. I have yet to try any other frostings with cookie cake, just because I don't know if it would compare. But feel free to venture out into the world of homemade frosting. I'd love to know what tastes good with this cake.

The Final Product:

Hopefully your sense of spacing is a little better than mine, and you can manage to center your words. Now there's nothing left to do but stick some candles in it and slice it up! Happy 24th Birthday!