Black and White Cookie Ripple Coffee Cake

This is one of the recipes that I've been eying for a long time in my Passion for Baking book -- oreo cookies rippled through a buttermilk coffee cake. Yum. I started flipping through my cookbooks as soon as I got home from work trying to decide what I was going to make. I managed to narrow the list to 5 or 6 choices by the time that Chris got home but when I listed the options to him he didn't even hesitate -- he wanted the oreo cake.

This is a super easy cake to put together. A quick buttermilk coffee cake layered with chopped oreo cookies, they don't really get much easier. The glaze recipe I list here, isn't actually the glaze recipe in the book though. The one in the book just calls for powdered sugar, milk and vanilla, but those are pasty-tasting and I have never liked them. I have recently discovered the world of difference that melted butter makes in glaze recipes and I refuse to make a glaze without butter anymore. I have seen the light and I'm never going back.

The base cake in this recipe is a really great, moist buttermilk cake which is contrasted by oreos, which are one of the few store-bought cookies I like. The oreos in the middle are a soft and gooey stream of chocolate-oreo goodness in the middle of the cake, while the cookies on top offer a contrasting crunch. Yum.



Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup buttermilk
4 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
30 coarsely chopped sandwich cookies

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
2-6 TBsp butter milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9-inch tube pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a mixer bowl, cream softened butter and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs 2 at a time, and blend on medium speed until blended, scraping bowl often to make sure no butter or sugar sticks to the bottom. Add vanilla and buttermilk and blend well. Fold in flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and blend until batter is smooth, about 2 to 4 minutes.

Pour 2/3 of the batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle 2/3 of cookie pieces over batter, putting more on perimeter than direction in middle area (cookie pieces are less likely to sink when dispersed this way). Top with remaining batter and top batter evenly with remaining cookie pieces.

Bake 45 minutes and then reduce oven temp to 325. Finish baking until cake tests done with a cake skewer that almost comes out clean, another 15-20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in pan before turning cake out onto a serving plate.

For glaze, whisk sugar, butter and vanilla together. Slowly add enough milk to make a thin glaze. Drizzle glaze over top of cake with a fork or whisk. Let glaze set.