Cookie dough cupcakes, oh my!

Its been quite a week for my kitchen...

On Sunday we had an Easter brunch with our friends that went super successfully and very fun!  I made homemade cinnamon rolls, breakfast casserole/egg thing, and strawberry coffee cake.  I might skip explaining all these recipes, save them for another day, and move on to.....

Dano's birthday!  I felt the need to make two desserts for his birthday so he could take one into the office and have one all to himself.  For the office, I made cookie dough cupcakes in which I stole the idea from Allrecipes, but used some frozen balls of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (I add about 1/4c extra flour and refrigerate my dough until it is hard, for cookies) and the usual dark chocolate cake recipe (halved).

I dipped each one into chocolate ganache (about 1 cup chocolate chips melted with 1/2c half and half).  They were good but I think I did overcook them because the dough inside was... well, a cookie! 

So for Dano's dinner dessert I made this white chocolate raspberry cheesecake.   

I tried to use raspberry jam but I made the mistake of adding a little water to it while it was heating because it wasn't smooth and I think it was too watery for this recipe.  It was still delicious but I might do something different next time!  I also cooked the cheesecake in a water bath by covering the bottom of the outside of my springform pan in aluminum foil (a couple times) and placing it on a cookie pan in the oven.  Then I carefully poured water into the cookie pan.  After the allotted cook time I took the cheesecake off the pan and let it sit in the oven to cool.

This was only the second cheesecake I have ever made but the first one not to crack!  I was very, very happy that this turned out and was so delicious!  If you like the cheesecake at Olive Garden you should make this ASAP!

For Dano's dinner, I made baked brie and ciabatta bread, eggplant parmesan scaled down to just one medium sized eggplant, and pasta sauce made the old fashioned way blanching and peeling tomatoes!  Overall, it was an awesome week of yummy food.... good thing I also got my new running shoes this week and made good use of those  ;)