Today is my daughters' birthday. One of the ways that I show them my love is to bake a special birthday cake. This year's cake is mostly about taste and texture, and less about beauty. I gave a lot of thought to what kind of cake to make for them. One daughter really loves Oreo cookies, and the other loves cookies and cream ice cream. So, the logical choice for this year's cake was a cookies and cream cake.
I had a white cake mix in the pantry, along with plenty of cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar. The only ingredient that I needed to buy was 1 package of Oreo-type cookies, which I found at Walmart for just under $2.
Once home, I mixed the cake mix according to package directions, then folded in 12 crushed cookies. I left some kind of large chunks, as you can see in the split cake. The cakes baked in slightly less time than the mix instructions suggested.
After baking, I cooled the cakes, then split each so that I would have a 4-layer cake. Between the layers is the dark chocolate frosting which also is glopped onto the top of the cake to hold the cookie "garnishes." The dark chocolate frosting is simply a homemade, cocoa powder buttercream frosting.
After the layers were assembled, I frosted the sides and top with a cookies and cream frosting -- a vanilla buttercream frosting into which 12 crushed cookies are folded. I used a baggie with a corner cut out to pipe globs of dark chocolate frosting on the top, after which I placed a half cookie into each chocolate blob around the edge, and 1 whole cookie in the center. To finish the sides, I took some cookie pieces and crushed them finely with a rolling pin in a bag. I then scooped up the cookie crumbs, and pressed them onto the sides of the cake. The crumb finish kind of hides any messiness of the cookies and cream frosting. I'm hoping this will be a hit tonight.
