Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Stuffed Cupcakes

Okay, okay, this doesn't exactly thrust me to the summit of the healthful eating mountain, but I nearly fell off the treadmill when I read this. Yes, I read a cupcake recipe at the gym...and I, eh hem, don't feel too badly about it. Since we're not a huge dessert family to begin with, I'm going to claim the rule of moderation. When you see something like this, you have to at least try it, right?

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Stuffed Cupcakes

They've replaced wedding cakes and some bakeries exclusively sell them -- cupcakes are not just a childhood classic anymore. But, for dessert connoisseurs who may think cupcakes are just buttercream and sprinkles, we've got the recipe for you. We've searched high and low and have come up with this 'grown up' version -- so stop what you are doing and make these!

Ingredients:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1½ cups light brown sugar, packed

• 4 large eggs

• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp. baking powder

• 1 tsp. baking soda

• ¼ tsp. salt

• 1 cup milk

• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

• 1 cup chocolate chips

• Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line two cupcake pans with paper liners. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and brown sugar. Beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

• Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir together to blend. Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl on low speed, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Blend in the vanilla. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula and mix by hand.

• Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cupcake liners. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the filling:

• 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

•To make the cookie dough filling, combine the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla until incorporated and smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips.

• To fill the cupcakes, cut a cone-shaped portion out of the center of each cupcake. Fill each hole with a chunk of the chilled cookie dough mixture. You can be generous with the cookie dough mixture.

For the frosting:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

• ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed

• 3½ cups confectioners’ sugar

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• ¾ tsp. salt

• 3 tbsp. milk

• 2½ tsp. vanilla extract

• To make the frosting, beat together the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until creamy. Mix in the confectioners sugar until smooth. Beat in the flour and salt. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and well blended.

• Frost the filled cupcakes as desired, sprinkling with mini chocolate chips and topping with mini chocolate chip cookies for decoration.

For decoration:

• Tiny chocolate chip cookies

• Mini chocolate chips

Kris Schoels is the author of Young Married Chic -- a blog devoted to baking, fashion, home decor and travel.

I wish I knew then....

I've said before, my second daughter is a "spirited child". Actually, they all are, but second is the most text book version. For a complete picture of what a spirited child is, read "Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

With spirited children, every day is a challenge, but some phases tend to be a bit harder. We're going through some of that now.

As I was sitting here reflecting, praying and refining my game plan, I had to chuckle to myself at my very first memory of her.....

I was in labor and awake for approximately 48 hours before she blessed the world with her presence. Let me be clear. NO sleep and in pain for TWO whole days. To say I was tired would be the understatement of the century.

I'm not really the type to send my fresh, newborn baby to the nursery by choice, but in this case, if I didn't get a solid couple of hours of sleep I was afraid of what might happen. So, after welcoming her into the world and feeding her, I asked the nurses to take her to the nursery and promptly passed out.

A couple of hours later, a nurse came into my room and woke me from the deepest sleep known to man and said "Mom, she's not having it. She's been screaming since she got to the nursery and there's nothing we can do to console her. She wants to be with you." Let me tell you, this is NOT what I wanted to hear from my coma-like state. She then re-swaddled my newborn and laid her in bed next to me. She instantly snuggled into me and fell asleep like she didn't have a care in the world. The two of us slept there together like rocks for the next five hours when we woke up famished.

What I didn't realize at the time and have grown to know about her, is that this was her personality in all it's glory from day one. She let us know who she was from her first breath.

She's a girl who wants it her way or no way at all. She's a girl who will make loud demands and argue with anyone who stands in her way. If she sets her mind to it, she can move mountains. She has strong opinions and is tough, is persistent and relentless - all qualities present in the most wonderful adults I know.

But most importantly, she's a girl who with just a little bit of love, attention and affection, can be the most endearing, sweet and heart-melting human being I've ever known.

Star Student Science Experiment

#1 was the Star Student this week in her class. You can pretty much guess what that entails - bringing in pictures, special show-n-tell, telling everyone your favorite colors, foods, etc....

It seems to be the most exciting thing one can possibly do in Kindergarten.

One unexpected responsibility of the Star Student is to present a science experiment to the class. It can be just about anything. Some popular topics include magnets, water cycle, animals and you can guess the rest.

True to form, no idea we came up with was good enough for our daughter. We pored over books and the internet looking for ideas and she just wasn't satisfied with any of the standard options. She wanted it to be unique and she actually wanted to be interested in the topic. The nerve.

Let me tell you, it was A LOT of work to settle on something, but we finally did.

DISSIPATION

We based the experiment off of this, which luckily came with a video. Easy peasy.

Micah, aka: Mr. Arnold the Science Guy, with the help of his lovely assistant, explained to the class that permanent ink is "hydrophobic". However, it dissolves in rubbing alcohol and the ink molecules "dissipate".

The children wrapped a square of t-shirt material around a cup and secured it with a rubber band. They made designs on their t-shirts with colored sharpie markers. Then, we went around the class using medicine droppers to drop alcohol on the designs. The collective "WWWHHHHOOOAAAA" that echoed through the class told us we had done well.

The children were pretty impressed and the teachers couldn't remember seeing the experiment before which meant our Kindergartener had ticked all of the boxes on her list = SUCCESS!!

After getting through this with her, I'm not sure how much I'm looking forward to the science fair projects of later grades. But, I am quite proud of her joys and victories.

Happy 6th Birthday!!!

My oldest "baby" turned 6 this past weekend.

I don't think anyone has ever been more excited to turn 6.

We invited the girls from her class and had a nice party in the park with pizza, cake and a bounce house.

She and her friends had tons of fun.

I love my toes!

I recently discovered how much I take my toes for granted. I never realized how much I use them until I broke one. :-(

The other night, I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. Still half asleep, I kicked the metal frame of a baby bouncer on my way back to bed. It has been sitting in the exact same spot out of normal traffic patterns for over a year....I have no excuse other than being asleep.

I immediately knew I broke it, but since I was still asleep, I just climbed back into bed. For the rest of the night, all of my dreams revolved around broken toes. It was quite bizarre, but I'm guessing it was triggered by the pain. In the morning, in those moments between wake and sleep, I tried my hardest to will it away and prayed with all my might that it was nothing but bad dreams. Alas, when I finally woke up, without removing the covers, I knew my toe was broken.

There is pretty much nothing that can be done for a broken toe. I taped it to it's next door neighbor and all I can do is wait....maybe 4-6 weeks. The pain is pretty severe (especially when I tripped this morning). Mostly, I'm just really frustrated that can hardly walk and will have to miss/modify my workout/yoga routine that I've come to depend on. The recumbent bike sounds the most promising, but I might just go crazy.

The older girls have been very compassionate and helpful, not wanting me to walk around too much. The baby - well, she hasn't mastered the art of compassion yet. God bless her as she runs away from me!

Take care of your toes!

Man it feels good to be a Spartan...

So, ask my wife and she'll tell you that my favorite runs are the ones where I've gone off reservation and come home bleeding, scraped or bruised with some kind of hair-brained story about kicking a cactus or free-climbing boulders on the trail. Which more or less sums up the Spartan Race, in which I participated yesterday.

Promoted as "8+ miles of Hell" I knew it would be my kind of race...and hosted just south of my house on the Gila River Indian Reservation at Wild Horse Pass Resort this is familiar territory for me.

For the last few weeks I've been following the Spartan Race Facebook page complete with daily workouts and lots and lots of smack talk from the potential entrants. Marines, SEAL's, Army, ROTC, CrossFit, Triathletes, etc...I was psyching myself up for a serious butt-kicking, and walking past all of the "USMC" shirts in the parking lot didn't help.

So I quietly mixed in with the group near the starting line b/c I knew it was going to be nuts out of the gate. and it was...starting with the girl spitting fire at the racers and spinning flaming metal balls on chains. I could tell a good time was ahead. A host of "AROO's" went up from the crowd as we started and then it was off to the races: Out of the gate through Smoke Bombs, up and down a natural dirt berm, turned hard left and went up and over a pile of hay bales and then (seriously) they had built a huge hurdle out of DuraFlame logs (!!). They were freshly lit and totally flaming out of control when the first of us went through them, so we just sucked it up and ran through a wall of fire, praying we didn't come down in the middle of them.

There were tunnels, then we had to swim across the Wild Horse river 2 times...um, crawled through 100 yards of mud, crossed crazy zig-zag balance beams, went over a cargo net wall, crouched under a low tent while running up a river, over/under/thru successive 5' walls...oh and if you failed a task, it was pushups or burpees or some other kind of punishment.

Oh and then we got to the brick drag (but not before you had to solve a rubix cube or do 50 pushups). They had attached those concrete anchors you use for a gazebo or deck structure to 10 foot ropes and you had to drag them forwards about 50 yards, then backyards 50 yards then hand them to the person behind you and then try to run out again...(woof).

So this is basically how the day went...finished by hopping an 8 foot wall, swimming the river again (Thank God! It felt great!), going up and over a diagonal/slippery wall, rocking the traverse wall (think rock climbing but you had to go across a 20 foot wall without touching the ground or the top. Penalty=30 burpees!) and then arriving at the spear throw. Seriously, throw a spear at a big bale of hay wearing a Spartan helmet. Miss and it's 20 pushups (for the record, this was my ONLY penalty of the day!!! I also got to do my penalty pushups right in front of my lovely wife and girls who now know that I cannot hurl a spear with any great accuracy, though I am more used to doing pushups with girls on my back then not). From there it was a straight shot to the next mud crawl, hard left hand turn into a pit with 5 gladiators just trying to keep you from crossing the finish line with pontoon sticks, throwing hay in your face, pushing and hitting you, etc etc and (phew) you're done. That's it.

So, in sum, I took 22nd overall in the race (Official results here. yahoo!!). If I had known how good i would feel at the end and the day after, i would have gone harder, I think. I was prepared to get kicked in the teeth, be bloody and hurting at that end, but I believe that I gave that course a good what-for. So happy to have almost no penalties...ready to rock the next runs that come this way (Warrior Dash, May 1; Dirty 6, May 7).

As I thought to myself on Saturday: "It's a whole lot more fun than running 13.1 miles down a straight, paved road" and "...to think that some folks just woke up today to play golf!". Rock on y'all.

Jenny Bars

We love love LOVE LaraBars! I love them because the only ingredients are real fruit and nuts (only 3-5 ingredients depending on the flavor). I also love them because they are convenient to carry in my purse and healthy for the kids. They love them because they taste yummy. I sound like a cereal commercial.

What I don't love is the price tag. They used to sell them at my Costco, but no longer. I was searching online for a way to buy the bars cheaper in bulk and inadvertently stumbled upon a plethora of homemade recipes. I decided to try it.

I used this woman's recipe as my template, but there are many others to choose from. I took pictures of my process, but hers are better, so check out her page.

I bought all of my ingredients in bulk at Whole Foods.

I processed 1 cup of dates with 1 cup of dried cherries and set aside. In another container, I processed 1/2 cup of coconut, 1/2 of raw almonds and a handful of Chia Powder. Then I slowly added the fruit mixture, blending between additions. Be careful, your food processor my overheat like mine did. My template said to add water if needed, but I didn't seem to need it.

Then, I pressed the mixture into the bottom of an 8x8 pan. These bars looked too thin to me, so I repeated the process and pressed the second batch on top of the first. Next, I put the pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, then cut into bars.

I made another double batch of apricot bars and the put all of them in the freezer.

Last, but not least, add your name!

These are the PERFECT snacks for my family to pack for work, school and errand running without costing a fortune. SUCCESS!!