Adventures in Baking: A Cookie Cake Birthday Cake

Full disclosure here: there are A TON of birthday cake cookie cake recipes online, so this is nothing original. However, I had so many requests for this recipe after posting the process and a final photo on my Insta stories, that I figured, hey, let’s add another to the mix.

If you’ve got a crazy memory, you may recall that Adam requested a cookie cake for his groom’s cake—it’s his absolute favorite cake, so there was clearly only one option when it came to his 35th birthday cake last week. There was a slight wrench thrown in my plan to surprise him when he ended up teleworking on his birthday (it’s not easy to secretly bake in an 849 square foot home…), but I was able to pull it together and I think I did pretty damn good on the decorations despite my lackluster piping skills.

I did, however, discover that we have a bit of an “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” situation as Adam asked on his first piece, “Do we have ice cream?” Noted for the next birthday.

BAKING A BIRTHDAY CAKE COOKIE CAKE

I’m not a strong baker due to an aversion to perfection and measurements (let me cook any day!), so I had to do my research when it came to “easy cookie cake recipes.” There were two variations of the birthday cake cookie cake recipe I found online—one with cornstarch and one without. I don’t keep cornstarch on hand and, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what it does, so I went with the recipe without.

This took no more than 20 minutes start-to-finish to get it in the oven, baked for 22 minutes, and then I had to let it cool for several hours before decorating. SUPER easy. Literally anyone can do it.

BIRTHDAY CAKE COOKIE CAKE

Ingredients:

10 tablespoons salted butter, softened

2/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 2/3 cup flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Pillsbury chocolate funfetti frosting

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease an 8-10″ round cake pan, depending on the thickness you want. I actually went with a 10″ white ceramic quiche dish because I knew I wasn’t going to attempt to remove the cookie cake from the pan—so, basically, I needed it to look intentional (the sprinkles totally pop against the white, right?!).

Using a mixer*, mix the butter and sugars together on medium until light and fluffy. Slowly add in the egg and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients—flour and baking soda. Once mixed, slowly combine these with the wet ingrdients. Mix well until no dry ingredients remain visible.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Bake for 20-25 minutes (depending on size of pan and density of cookie cake) or until golden brown on the top. I let mine bake for 22 minutes and the center was just a bit gooey. I figured it would continue to bake outside of the oven—and, come on, everyone prefers a gooey cookie to a dry one, right?!

Let cool and decorate with frosting and funfetti sprinkles. I did the old-fashioned frosting-in-a-ziploc bag piping method and, while it may not be the most professional, it turned out looking mighty festive!

* I used to be totally intimidated by mixers—and I still have no desire for the classic Kitchenaid stand mixer because #counterspace, BUT we got a Kitchenaid hand mixer as a wedding gift and I pull this thing out multiple times a week. So simple to use and so easy to clean. I would 100% recommend this for anyone that’s not a regular baker, but needs the option to cream and mix on occasion.