I am not a baker, but I try anyway and I love cupcakes!

Tonight one of my good girlfriends came over for a baking night, something I have not attempted in several years unless it is something super easy out of a box. Case in point: The Christmas sugar cookie disaster of 2012. I have no pictures from this event because I have a different phone now but somewhere along the line we either missed an ingredient or added too little or too much of something and the result was tacky dough that did not work with the cookie cutters and ripped left and right. Never. Again.

This picture is not what I was looking for but it made me laugh:

I love, love, love gourmet cupcakes and sweets and make it a point to seek them out but usually leave the baking to the experts.

But tonight was an exception since I had a master baker in the house. And we cheated a little. Just a little.

We decided on two recipes. Naturally, the first involved cupcakes, and not just any cupcakes, but cookie dough stuffed ones. This is where some of the cheating began. Instead of making cookie dough from scratch as per the recipe, we used a roll of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie dough.

This is the link to the recipe:
 http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Chip-Cookie-Dough--Cupcake--The-BEST-Cupcake-Ever/Detail.aspxevent8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=chocolate%20chip%20cookie%20dough%20cupcake&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page&soid=sr_results_p1i1.

If you really want to make your cookie dough from scratch then by all means go for it. We did not to save a little time. If you don't want to make your own cookie dough then you really only need to follow steps 2, 3, and 4 of the directions, with the exception of the last sentence of #1, which is freezing 24 two tablespoon balls of dough for at least 2 hours.

The second part where we cheated is we did not make our own icing. Icing from scratch is really easy and delectable but again, in the interest of time, we used a can of Duncan Hine's whipped vanilla icing. This has a pretty good taste without being too sweet and went just fine with our cupcakes.

Here are the before and afters of the cupcakes:

The verdict: Melt-in-your-mouth good with all those morsels of chocolate oozing out of the middle.

The second recipe of the night was for Oatmeal Scotchies. These are hands down probably my favorite cookies. My friend has been making these since we were in high school and they never fail to be amazing, truly addicting. And all from a recipe on the back of a bag of Nestle Tollhouse butterscotch chips. Every package has this recipe on the back. It can also be found here: http://www.food.com/recipe/nestle-oatmeal-scotchies-20376. Each cookie is a delicious mouthful of cinnamon and butterscotch with the added texture of the oats, and they are so buttery. Definitely not a diet cookie but so worth it.

A few tips I learned from the master baker this evening: One, if your measuring cup is wet from rinsing and you need it for sugar, use a spoon to dip in the bag and then pour into your cup so your bag of sugar doesn't get lumpy. When measuring brown sugar that needs to be packed, scrape the full measuring cup along the side of the bag and press down with your hand so that you get as much in the cup as possible. When frosting cupcakes, if you have a pastry design tip cut one of the corners off the end of a plastic bag, insert the pastry design tip, fill frosting in the bag and squeeze to make a nice design on your cupcake.