This will satisfy your sweet tooth and chocolate cravings... and love for cookie dough. Cupcakes with a chocolate chip cookie dough center. What a delicious idea. I have a weakness for cupcakes and I have to say that these are up there with the best of them. I could eat them until I can't possibly stuff anything more in my stomach and I'm in a cupcake coma on my sofa.

I found the recipe online but modified it a little for better results. Obviously if you can be bothered to make the yellow cake mix yourself, it's better than the packaged stuff but packaged stuff works too. The most important step is freezing the cookie dough before you add it to the cupcakes. If you don't you won't have cookie dough in the middle, it will just bake along with the rest of the cup cake and turn out a bit dry. And don't over bake them. I'd say it's better to under bake than over bake so keep an eye on them.

Here goes....

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

1 (18.25 ounce) box yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 eggs

Directions

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and sea salt and put to one side.

Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth.

Add 1 egg and the vanilla extract and beat until smooth.

Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated.

Fold in the chocolate chips; mixing just enough to evenly combine.

Form the dough into tablespoon-sized balls; place onto a baking sheet, and freeze until solid, about 2 hours.

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 24 cupcake trays with paper liners.

Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer to break up. Add the cake mix, water, and canola oil; continue beating for 2 minutes on medium speed. Spoon into the prepared cupcake liners, filling each 2/3 full.

Place a frozen cookie dough ball on the top of each cupcake in the center.

Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the cake portion of the cupcake (not the cookie dough ball) comes clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack. The cake mixture should have risen around the cookie dough balls all being well.

To finish, top them off with a whipped chocolate butter cream or something equally gooey and sweet.

There goes your New Year's Resolution to cut down on chocolate and sweet stuff...