4th of July S'more Cookie Cake

You know when you were younger and you would bake cookies with your mom, and every time you tried to eat the raw cookie dough she’d slap your hand and say “IF YOU KEEP EATING THAT RAW DOUGH YOU’RE GONNA GET YOURSELF SICK!!!” but you’d sneak it anyway cause it’s just so dang good? Yeah that was me. I can still hear my middle school cooking teacher saying “Never eat raw dough. Or you’ll get salmonella and die.” But have either of those things ever stopped me? Nope. I mean let’s be honest the cookie dough is so much better than the actual baked cookies. But it was pretty much inevitable that I was going to get a bad egg at some point in my baking career because I almost ALWAYS taste the batter or dough (how else am I supposed to know if it needs some added flavor?). Sadly that day was yesterday. I ate maybe a littleee more of the cookie dough than I probably should have, and within an hour I was sick as a dog. And this was just the cherry on top of biggest pain in the butt cake baking experience I’ve ever had. Oh, HAPPY 4^TH OF JULY BY THE WAY!!!! :). So let me tell you about this 4^th of July cake I baked up. We are going down to my sister’s house to celebrate today and a bunch of her friends will be there so I thought I’d do a “college friendly cake”. What’s more college friendly than a s’more cookie cake amiright? The cookie layers baked beautifully I had no problems there, and they came out of their pans flawlessly. The problems began when I made the frosting. It was a marshmallow frosting, very fitting for a s’more cake. This stuff STUCK TO EVERYTHING. And it was so dang gooey. My plan was to frost it all in white then add red and blue dye and pipe on a cute design. By the end, it just looked like giant gobs of red and blue with some sprinkles. It was too ugly I just couldn’t do it. SO I scraped off all of that gooey mess and made a completely different frosting – which actually turned out better because the marshmallow frosting was waywayway too sweet to put on an already very sweet cake. The new frosting was a brown sugar cream cheese frosting. But cailin being cailin, I was too impatient to let the brown sugar mixture cool down so the frosting was very runny. When I went to pipe on some pretty purple roses, yeah they looked like the saddest, melted wilted roses I’d ever seen. At this point I was throwing a huge fit because this cake was just DETERMINED to be the ugliest thing on the planet. As I am having my pity party my mom comes over to me and says “just make the whole thing purple throw on some sprinkles, we’ll put it on a cute background and say that was your plan all along”. 

                What would I do without her? (She's my wonderful photographer by the way)

S’more Cookie Cake

Fudgy Brownie Layer:

·         ½ cup butter, melted

·         ½ cup granulated sugar

·         ½ cup brown sugar

·         2 eggs

·         1 tsp vanilla extract

·         ¾ cups flour

·         ½ cup cocoa powder

·         ½ tsp baking powder

·         ½ tsp salt

·         1 ½ cups chocolate chips (I used those cool new caramel filled chocolate chips Nestle has)

Instructions

1.      Grease 3 8-inch round cake pans and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2.      In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the melted butter, sugar and brown sugar until combined.

3.      Add the eggs and vanilla until smooth.

4.      Add flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and chocolate chips until incorporated.

5.      Spread into one of the prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Graham Layer

·         1/2 cup butter, room temperature

·         ¼ cup shortening

·         ¾ cup brown sugar

·         ¼ cup granulated sugar

·         1 egg

·         2 tsp vanilla extract

·         1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

·         2 cups crushed s’more Oreos (or graham crackers)

·         1 tsp baking soda

·         ½ tsp salt

·         1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

1.      In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter, shortening, and sugars until light and fluffy.

2.      Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined.

3.      In another bowl, combine crushed oreos, flour, baking soda, and salt and whisk together.

4.      Mix dry ingredients slowly into wet ingredients until combined.

5.      The dough should not be sticky, if it is add a bit more flour (I needed to do this). If it is crumbly add water 1 tsp at a time.

6.      Add in chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed.

7.      Spread dough into other two prepared pans and bake for about 25 minutes, careful not to let them get too brown.

Eggless Oreo Cookie Dough Filling

·         12 tbsp. butter, room temperature

·         2/3 cup brown sugar

·         2/3 cup sugar

·         1 tsp vanilla

·         ¼ tsp salt

·         1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

·         3-4 tbsp. milk

·          About 10 s’more Oreos, chopped

Instructions

1.      In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter, sugars, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy.

2.      Beat in the flour and milk.

3.      Stir in the chopped Oreos.

Brown Sugar Buttercream

·         1/4cup brown sugar, packed

·         2 tbsp. butter

·         2 tbsp. heavy cream

·         ½ cup butter, room temperature

·         4 oz cream cheese, room temperature

·         2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions

1.      Heat the brown sugar, 2 tbsp. butter, and cream over medium heat in a saucepan whisking until the butter melts.

2.      Bring to boil then boil for a minute.

3.      Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

4.      In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy.

5.      Beat in the cooled brown sugar mixture and the powdered sugar, ½ cup at a time.

Assembly

1.      Allow cakes to cool before removing from their pans.

2.      Start with the chocolate chip graham cookie layer, then spread half of the Oreo cookie dough filling over the top.

3.      Top with the brownie fudge layer. Then spread the other half of the Oreo cookie dough over this.

4.      Last, top with second chocolate chip graham cookie layer.

5.      Spread the brown sugar frosting over entire cake.

6.      Store in the fridge, and make sure to eat with a big glass of milk! :)