Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake is a remake of a classic after school snack—a chocolate chip cookie! Brown sugar cake, cookie dough filling, and vanilla sour cream frosting taste like having a warm cookie and a cool glass of milk!
Being in a health conscious household, it was hard to come by cookies. Chocolate chip cookies were the only cookies my mother made.
It was the 90s and my mother, like many home cooks looking through mail order catalogs, bought nifty kitchen gadgets like the food processor. Bless her soul, but I cringe when I think of cookie dough being made in the food processor. Unlike brownies, chocolate chip cookies need aeration of fat.
Those food processor cookies, combined with being over baked, were rubbery, dry, and burnt things. You could have used those cookies as a door stop or a bookend—they were that rock hard. But I was a child, I had zero standards, I was just yearning for a sugar hit.
So I never had a tasty chocolate chip cookie memory. I need to make a better cookie memory, better yet, in cake form!
Finding a moist, but not heavy chocolate chip cake recipe was a turbulent challenge. Getting chocolate chip morsels evenly dispersed in the batter was a challenge. I wanted the flavor of brown sugar, without the entailed heaviness. I finally settled on the cake recipe from Tessa Huff’s recent book Layered.
This butter cake has just enough molasses and light brown sugar to give the cake the flavor profiles of a baked chocolate chip cookie.
The cookie dough filling was also problematic. Initially I had made a chocolate chip cookie, but that made for a messy cake that didn’t slice. Recipes for eggless cookie dough were not soft enough to adhere to the cake layers. An eggless cookie dough would fall out from the cake layers. I wanted the filling to be softer, have a more frosting like consistency, and not be sweet with excessive powdered sugar. I needed the frosting to remain soft and pliable even after it chilled in the fridge.
To the rescue were two ingredients seldom seen in chocolate chip cookies: cream cheese and sour cream. Since the cookie dough wasn’t being baked, I didn’t need the butter from structure. At room temperature and in the fridge, cream cheese is much softer than butter.
The cream cheese also toned down the sweetness from the brown sugar. The addition of sour cream also gave tartness and it changed the cookie dough with a soft texture. Sour cream also makes an appearance in the frosting. In the frosting? Sour cream? Really? Trust me.
Sour cream is used in chocolate frosting, but a vanilla version would be a perfect companion for the chocolate chip cookie cake. The frosting is softer and less sweet than typical frostings. The tang acts like a cool glass of milk—cutting through the warm sweet brown sugar and melty chocolate chips.
Better yet, have some blue milk! I couldn’t stop at having just blue plates, the milk had to color coordinate as well.
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- For the Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake:
- 3 ¼ cups cake flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
- 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 ½ tablespoons molasses
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 large egg yolks, room temperature
- 1 ¼ cup buttermilk, room temperature
- For the Cookie Dough Filling:
- 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 ½ cups firmly packed light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
- For the Cool Milk Frosting:
- ½ cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- pinch of fine salt
- 4 to 5 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
- ¾ cup to 1 cup sour cream, room temperature
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 3 8-inch cake pans with baking spray, set aside.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Remove 2 tablespoons of the dry ingredients and toss the dry mixture in a small bowl with the mini chocolate chips. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on a medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the sugars and beat on a medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 to 4 minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl down.
- Beat in the molasses and vanilla. Add the eggs and egg yolks, one at a time, until incorporated into the batter.
- With the mixer on low add the dry ingredients in 3 batches and the buttermilk in 2 batches, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Give the bowl and beater a good scraping with a rubber spatula by hand to ensure nothing sticks to the side. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.
- Divide the batter between the prepared pans and bake for 24 to 28 minutes, rotating halfway. A toothpick inserted should come out mostly clean with a few crumbs. Do not over bake this cake. After cooling for 5 minutes in the pan, invert the cake layers onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese until smooth and lump free, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until fully blended, about 3 more minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl down.
- With the mixer on low, add the flour and salt, followed by the sour cream, beating until smooth and lump free. Beat in the mini chocolate chips. Refrigerate until you’re ready to assemble.
- Beat the butter and cream cheese on a medium-high speed in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, about 4 minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl down and add the vanilla and salt.
- With the mixer’s speed on low, gradually add the powdered sugar. Follow by adding the sour cream. You want a smooth, but not wet, looking frosting. Refrigerate to set the frosting up.
- If the cake layers have domes, use a serrated knife to level off the tops. Use an offset spatula to gently spread the cookie dough filling onto the cake layer. Secure the second layer and spread more cookie dough filling. Top with the third layer. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes. Apply a thin layer of the Cool Milk Frosting and freeze for an hour. Finish with a final thicker layer of frosting.
Other recipes you may enjoy:
Rainbow Chip Funfetti Layer Cake
