Cookies & Cream Cake

This is an older recipe that I never posted but there is no better time than the present! Isn't that a famous quote? I think I made this cake for my birthday? Yes, you read that correctly... I made myself a birthday cake. You see, the reason why is because I have a serious nut-allergy and have trust issues with people other than my mother making baked goods for me. But enough about me, let's talk about this amazing cake!

Beware - if you are looking for an "easy" cake recipe, this is not it... BUT if you are up for a challenge and happen to also love Oreo cookies, then this recipe is for you! It is time consuming because of the many steps and essentially the three different layers you have to make: the cake, the filling and the frosting. I wouldn't say it was difficult to make, just labor intensive - especially for someone who did not have a Kitchenaid stand mixer at the time. Ugh.

Ingredients:
For the cake:(I typically don't mess with "baking" ingredients)
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
 2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

For the filling:
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/8 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
10 chocolate sandwich cookies, chopped (I can't remember exactly how many I used, but it was more than 10 that's for sure)

For the frosting:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. Stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans. Somehow, I had a lot of batter leftover so I made a small 9' square cake in addition to the larger cake.

Bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

To make the filling, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine the heavy cream, confectioners' sugar and vanilla. Beat on low speed until all sugar is incorporated; increase speed to high and whisk until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in chopped cookie pieces with a rubber spatula.

To make the frosting, melt the butter in a medium bowl. Stir in the cocoa. Alternately add confectioners' sugar and milk. beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla.

To assemble the cake, place one cake layer on a cardboard cake circle. Pipe a ring of the chocolate frosting around the outside edge of the cake. Fill the area inside the ring of frosting with a thick layer of the cookies and cream mixture. Place the second cake layer on top. Frost the sides of the cake layers with chocolate frosting. Pipe a decorative border of the chocolate frosting on top of the cake. Fill the area inside this border with a thick layer of the cookies and cream mixture. Garnish with extra chocolate sandwich cookies and whipped cream if desired. As you can see, I completely disregarded this section on how to assemble the cake and did my own thing... shocker. By the picture below, I still think my cake came out pretty!

This recipe was adapted from another blog that I follow - Annie's Eats. She had adapted the cake and frosting recipes from Hershey's and the filling recipe from Thyme for Food. I love the "circle of friends" I have found in the online world - who would have ever thought we would be able to do something like this 10+ years ago?

I chose to blog about this recipe in particular because it involves a LOT of chocolate - one of my favorites foods, next to cheese that is. For those of you who are Catholic out there, today is the first day of Lent, which means I have to give something up until April 24th. I chose to give up eating and baking with chocolate... so this is the last "chocolate" post you will see until Easter Sunday. You better believe I will be making a HUGE chocolate on chocolate cake for Easter. Tutti Mangia!