March 2, 2014

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake


For those of you that read the last Stuff and Things post, you know that there are some BIG things happening in my life right now. Namely, the fact that I bought a house.

And remember when I said I didn't have any pictures to share? Well, that's changed. Because I built it in the Sims. WHAT.

It might not be completely accurate, since I took the dimensions off the listing (which does not guarantee accuracy) and the layout from my memory, and I doubt the Sims is a one-to-one scale, but it gives you an idea.

Aerial view. Sorry for the wonky angle
Living room area... that's not a random fence. The condo is a second floor unit, and the stairs are a part of the unit. I just didn't feel like building 2 stories in the Sims. And that's Needy McSnuggles learning the hunting skill. He's much more proactive as a sim.
Dining room, that I've already decided will be my library, because I own a lot of books that need a home
Kitchen. You can see how nice and long it is. Plenty of room for me, even if there is limited counterspace (and there are upper cabinets, but they're nothing more than a pain in the butt in the game, so I didn't bother)
Bathroom and closet that doesn't yet have a washer and dryer, but that I will hopefully be converting
Bedroom. My sim's sleeping. Shhhhhh
Balcony. That I made way too long. It should end before the window
And this is the alien that stopped by at 2 in the morning to judge the fact that I haven't cleaned up my newspapers.
And just for fun, here's where the Grim Reaper pauses his important task of reaping souls to clean the litter box and play peek-a-boo with the pet snake. You gotta love the Sims.

As you can tell, I'm not excited at all about this. XD

Even though our closing date is officially at the end of April, there's still tons I need to do in the mean time. I've even started packing. Okay, one box. Of books. It still counts. So baking has kind of been pushed to the back burner.

Luckily, I had the photos of this cake just sitting in a folder, waiting.
This is the cake I made for my birthday (baker's lot-- you're expected to bake your own birthday cake). It was snowing (again. It always snows on my birthday) so the light was poor, and it didn't fit in my light tent, and I'm still not totally comfortable with my cake decorating skills, so I wasn't sure if I was even going to share this. But I didn't want to go another week without sharing something.
This cake is originally from Chocolate Moosey and is a chocolate chip cookie cake with toasted marshmallow filling and cookie dough frosting. Oh yes. Using toasted marshmallows as the filling to a cookie cake was a stroke of genius on Carla's part.

Now, the cake is really good, but I think the cookie dough frosting took it a little over the top. I'm usually pretty wary of frosting recipes that call for 4 or more cups of sugar because I don't like my frosting too sweet, but I trusted Carla's judgement. The frosting really does taste like cookie dough, and I sure as sugar ate it, but this is definitely a special-occasions-only cake, and meant for people with major sweet tooths. It was also super thick, about the consistency of cookie dough, so it wasn't the easiest to work with. But it's really good for making cookie dough sandwiches. :3
I, of course, made some modifications to the recipe. The bulk of them I think were unnecessary (I replaced half a cup of brown sugar with white and added some vegetable oil, but it ended up that the middle took too long to cook, and the edges got a little overdone. I don't think you'd have that problem following the original recipe). But the major modification I did was adding a scant teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

I know, that doesn't sound major. But one of the things my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe taught me was how good a little cinnamon is in a chocolate chip cookie. Not enough to make it a cinnamon cookie, but a little bit of cinnamon adds a depth and richness to the flavor that complements the cookie well. I also only added about half the chocolate chips because I'm the weird person who doesn't like too many chocolate chips in a chocolate chip cookie. But then I decorated the cake with chocolate chips, so it evens out.
Get the recipe here.