Happy Birthday Uncle Richie!!!

It is officially Uncle Richie's birthday today but because they were going on vacation we decided to celebrate his birthday earlier. Initially I was told that we were going to go out dinner together on Friday night therefore I quickly whipped out a cake for him but hubby said since we are going together it was difficult to take the cake with us to the restaurant without him finding out. So we thought that we would come home and have dessert BUT we were all TOO STUFFED from dinner to have dessert. So I made some plans to grill out and surprise uncle Richie with a cake on either Saturday or Sunday evening. Uncle Richie called Saturday and told us that they were at the grocery store and see if we wanted to grill out together then they can get the stuff to grill out. I hurriedly agree and we grill out on Saturday night and surprised Uncle Richie with his cake.

Cookies and Cream Cake adapted from Kaitlyn

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cups sugar

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

½ cup vegetable oil

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

For the filling:

2 cups heavy cream

1/8 cup confectioners’ sugar

¼ tsp. pure vanilla extract

10 chocolate sandwich cookies, chopped (I used 30 oreos)

For the frosting:

2 sticks of butter, softened

5 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350°. 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.

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, mix butter, milk and vanilla until smooth. Stir in 4 cups of sugar and beat until smooth. Keep adding ½ of sugar until frosting is at the right consistency.

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.

I skipped the frosting and used the filling to cover the whole cake. The results of the cake was yummylicious. The original recipe requires 2 Cups of Sugar but since we don't like too sweet of the cake I cut it down to 1cup. I figured that since I used much more oreo cookie than stated the sweetness from the oreo cookie will balance the sweetness.