Packers & Seahawks Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough filled Cupcakes

On Saturday, the Packers lost.  On Sunday, the Seahawks lost.  Two of my husband's best friends were devastated.  So he texted them, asking if they should get together and wear sackcloth and weep.
So due to Bible Study being cancelled on Monday night, we got together for dinner and I was assigned dessert.  Tim told me that I had all day at home to make a good dessert.
I came up with this:

Those of you who know me well (or just came to my wedding) know that I LOVE cupcakes.  And since Whodidily has closed, I don't think I've had a perfect cupcake.  This one came pretty close.  I actually want to make it again!!!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough-filled Cupcakes

Cupcakes
1 box Pillsbury yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1 c. water
1/3 c. olive oil
green food coloring

Cookie Dough
modified from "Cookie Dough Stuffed Cupcakes" at The Girl Who Ate Everything
1/4 c. butter
6T brown sugar
1 c. + 2T flour
7oz sweetened condensed milk (aka half a can)
1/2 t. vanilla
1/3 c. mini chocolate chips

Chocolate Frosting
modified from "Chocolate Buttercream Frosting" at Savory Sweet Life
1 c. butter
3 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/2 c. Hershey's cocoa powder
2 t. vanilla
5T whipping cream

How I made my cupcakes:

For the cupcakes themselves, I just threw all the ingredients in my KitchenAid mixer.

I used the wire whisk attachment and beat the ingredients for 2 minutes until there were no lumps and it was nice and fluffy.

Because we were getting together to mourn the Packers and the Seahawks, I decided to make my cupcakes in honor of those two teams.  Green & Yellow for the Packers, and Blue & Green for the Seahawks.  I added 5 drops of green food coloring to the batter to make the cupcakes a sweet light green color.  

Somehow I failed to get a picture of the cupcake liners and how full I filled them.  :(
I used half yellow (a la Packers) and half blue (a la Seahawks) cupcake liners.  I filled them about 3/4 full, so it only made 19 cupcakes (instead of the 24 the box says it makes).

After my cupcakes came out of the oven, I let them cool and made the chocolate chip cookie dough filling.

First, I creamed the butter with the brown sugar.

Then I added the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla.

When I added the flour, it made the dough very stiff and hard to scrape down the sides.

I added the chocolate chips last and the dough was ready to go in the cupcakes (and to eat)!

In order to fill the cupcakes with the cookie dough, I needed to make holes to fill.  I used our short rounded knife that we usually use for taking out tomato stems to cut little holes into the top of the cupcakes.

Cole was a little jealous and was peeping on my cupcakes.

I stuffed as much dough into the cupcakes as I could, using my fingers.  

They just needed frosting on top to be done!

I used room temperature butter, but it still took a while before it was creamed enough with my wire whisk attachment to not be lumpy when I added the powdered sugar.

I made the buttercream like I normally do, alternating adding amounts of powdered sugar with vanilla and whipping cream, and then adding the cocoa at the end right before the last T of whipping cream.

When the frosting was done, my intention was to us a piping tip and put the frosting on pretty like they do in cupcake shops, but, the frosting was way, way too stiff, so I ended up just spreading it on.

I added green sprinkles and mini flags (made out of toothpicks and sticky notes) to the Packers and Seahawks cupcakes.

Seahawks 12th Man cupcake 

Packers cheese-head cupcake

I put plain rainbow sprinkles on the cupcakes that I knew we
wouldn't be taking (but are Tim's new favorite breakfast item)

Things I would do differently next time:  

• Use the "frozen cookie dough" method.  Freeze the cookie dough ahead of time, and drop little balls into the cake batter before baking the cupcakes.  Then the little ball of cookie dough doesn't bake and it's at the bottom of the cupcake (and thus farther away from the frosting).
• Use my regular 2% milk in the frosting.  Then maybe I pipe it in pretty patterns on top of the cupcakes.  I may also just add cocoa powder to my regular buttercream recipe instead of using a different one.  
• Use my regular chocolate chip cookie dough recipe, with egg beaters pasteurized eggs so it is safe to eat raw.  The lack of flour in this cookie dough recipe seemed to make it "heavy" and Tim and I agreed the cookie dough needs to be lighter in texture.