My friend Karyn’s birthday is today, and because she and the rest of her department at the bank have been willing guinea pigs for a lot of my baking adventures, I wanted to try something fun and a little challenging for her birthday cake. I’d seen a couple cookie cakes on a couple different blogs, and I’ve been wanting to try my hand at one. When I showed a picture of one to Karyn and a couple of the officers in her area, they all seemed eager to try it.
I chose to sort of combine both Brandie’s recipes as well as Meghan’s, in that I made larger cookies like Brandie, but frosted the cake like Meghan. Okay, not exactly like Meghan, because her cake is WAY better-looking than mine! In my brain, the cake was going to look just like Meghan’s (only a little larger), but with chocolate frosting. I was even going to pipe stuff along the top and bottom of the cake, and with the fall sprinkles Karyn requested, it would be gorgeous! Ah, no. Not even close. But by 9:30 last night, when I was done frosting it, I no longer cared that it didn’t look like a professional cake from a bakery. No, it looks like a homemade cake, and that’s okay.
Karyn had already asked if Jay, the bambino and I would join her birthday dinner, and I gave her the choice of bringing the cake to work or to the restaurant. She suggested the restaurant, so I boxed it up and brought it along.
It was a hit!
Adapted from homecookingmemories.com
Yields 12-16
1 hrPrep Time
17 minCook Time
1 hr, 17 Total Time
Save RecipeIngredients
- 4 C flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 Tbsp butter, room temperature
- 1 1/2 C light brown sugar, packed
- 3/4 C white sugar
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs, plus 2 egg yolks
- 3/4 C heavy cream
- 2 C milk chocolate chips
- cooking/non-stick spray
- 1/2 batch of vanilla buttercream
- 1 batch of Swiss meringue buttercream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- In a large bowl, cream butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until fluffy. With mixer on low, add in the vanilla, eggs, and yolks. Alternately add in the flour mixture and the cream, in two additions of each. Stir in chocolate chips by hand. Chill the dough 30 minutes.
- Line an 8-inch cake pan with parchment paper. Place 1 1/2 C of dough in the cake pan. Spray clean hands with cooking spray and evenly press dough to the edges of the pan. Chill the dough in the cake pan for 15 minutes.
- Remove cookie dough from refrigerator. Lift parchment paper out of the cake pan and set on a large baking sheet. Bake for 17 minutes. Cool the cookie on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack. Repeat with the remaining dough. Once the cookies are completely cooled (I let mine cool overnight), carefully peel off the parchment paper.
- To assemble the cake, frost one of the cookies with about 1/2 C of vanilla buttercream, spreading as close to the edges as possible. Stack another cookie on top, and repeat until you've used all the cookies, but leave the top cookie unfrosted. Refrigerate 20-30 minutes to allow the frosting to set, then decorate the outside of the cookie cake as desired with the Swiss meringue buttercream.
Notes
The cook time in the recipe is for the individual cookies only & doesn't refer to the time needed to make the frostings or assembling and decorating the cake.
I couldn’t eat more than about a bite out of my slice… It’s REALLY rich and a little bit goes a long way. Karyn was happy with it, so that’s all that matters!
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