I made these cupcakes late last week in preparation for a field trip I was taking on the weekend with my roommate Britt.  She, and the rest of the Carleton varsity nordic ski team, happened to be competing in North Bay this past weekend.  North Bay just happens to be a hop, skip and a jump away from my hometown of Sudbury, so I decided to take a little break from the madness of Ottawa and have a weekend breather at home.

Since I was bumming a ride off a bunch of athletes, I wanted to do something to earn their acceptance.  And of course, everyone loves cupcakes.  So, I set out across the Internet to find the most delicious looking cupcake recipe that I could.  I found the recipe for these ones on my favourite food blog, Annie’s Eats.

Get this – there was half an Oreo at the bottom of every one of these cupcakes (see picture below!), making the first bite a sweet surprise.  Then there were chunks of oreos chopped into the cupcake batter.  To top it off was a decadent cream cheese icing with crushed oreo crumbs and a cookie garnish.  I think I bought out the grocery store’s entire supply of oreos in preparation to make these, but it was totally worth it.  Also, making these cupcakes reminded me of how miserable I am at icing things.  Since proper piping bags aren’t really in my student budget (although I have managed to snag some of Britt’s in the past), I was using a floppy Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner.  Even though the cupcakes looked nice, I ended up with half the frosting all over my hands, in my hair, on my apron……..

While I modeled the food (aka ate part of the cupcake so a picture could be taken of the inside), Britt got her camera out on the bus.  After some shaky pictures taken while travelling down a bumpy northern Ontario highway, we decided to wait until we got to North Bay before having a full fledged photo shoot with these cupcakes.  And then, I shared with the team, and earned their acceptance, one cookie-filled bite at a time.

Note: All these pictures were taken by my talented roommate Brittany.