Oreo Cupcakes (Doctored Cake Mix)

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These fluffy, flavorful Oreo Cupcakes are so easy to make with a box of cake mix!

Soft vanilla cupcakes are speckled with Oreo cookie crumbs and topped with Oreo Buttercream in this crowd pleasing recipe!

Closeup of Oreo Cupcakes

Don't miss our other other go-to cupcake recipes in our Cupcake Recipes section! Check out our Vanilla Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes, Margarita Cupcakes, and so many more!

Why We Love Them

These easy Oreo Cupcakes can be whipped up in no time! Here are just a few reasons that we love them:

  • Light and fluffy
  • Easy to Make with Cake Mix
  • The perfect grab and go dessert for picnics, potlucks, birthday parties, and more (just as with our vanilla cupcakes, caramel cupcakes, banana cupcakes, and more!)!
  • The added instant vanilla pudding and sour cream give them a delicious from-scratch texture. (We use this in our Marble Cake Mix Recipe as well!)
  • The cupcakes and the frosting are speckled with crushed Oreos, and topped with mini Oreos! What's not to love about this delicious, Oreo-filled recipe?

Oreo Cakes

We've made a few favorite Oreo cakes over the years, including our Scratch Cookies and Cream Cake (the scratch version of today's recipe), our Chocolate Oreo Layer Cake, Oreo Ice Cream Cake, and Mint Oreo Cake Recipe!

We're so glad to have a quick and easy recipe for Oreo Cupcakes to add to our collection of favorite cakes and cupcakes.

Oreo Cupcakes on a platter

How to Make Easy Oreo Cupcakes

You can find the full, printable recipe card for Oreo Cupcakes further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!

  • First, Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
  • Crush Oreos and set aside. You can do this with a food processor or by adding the cookies to a ziplock bag and crushing with a rolling pin. (We used 10 in the cake batter. Adjust to your liking).
Crushed Oreos in Ziplock Bat with Rolling Pin on top
  • Place paper cupcake liners into the wells of your cupcake pan. (This recipe makes a total of 28 cupcakes)
Dry Ingredients in Mixing Bowl with Whisk
  • In the bowl of your mixer, add the cake mix, all purpose flour, sugar, and vanilla instant pudding mix. Whisk to blend.
  • Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl. Mix on low speed for about 30 seconds.
Ingredients in Mixing Bowl
  • Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed and mix on medium speed for two minutes.
  • The batter should look well blended. Fold in the crushed Oreos.
Cake Batter with Crushed Oreos
  • Scoop the batter into the lined cupcake pan. We filled each cupcake liner about ⅔ full- approximately ¼ cup of Oreo cupcake batter in each.
Oreo Cupcake Batter in Cupcake Liners
  • Bake at 350 for approximately 18 minutes or until the cupcakes spring back when lightly touched, or a toothpick can be inserted and removed with just a few moist crumbs attached.
Freshly Baked Oreo Cupcakes
  • Remove the cupcakes from the pans soon after removing from the oven to prevent over-baking. We try to do this immediately to prevent over baking.
Oreo Cupcakes on Baking Rack

For the Oreo Buttercream

We frosted our cupcakes with Oreo Buttercream, which is a delicious American Buttercream recipe based on our Classic Vanilla Buttercream.

If you'd like a bit more chocolate, swap out the Oreo Buttercream for our easy and delicious Chocolate Buttercream recipe!

You can find the Oreo Buttercream Recipe in the Oreo cupcakes recipe card further down in this post. Here is a quick look at our steps:

  • Crush Oreos and set aside. (We used 10 Oreos, adjust amount to your liking).
  • Cream the (slightly softened) butter until smooth. Blend in the vanilla.
  • Add half of the powdered sugar and most of the milk. Beat at medium speed until the powdered sugar is incorporated.
  • Add remaining powdered sugar and milk and mix at medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally.
  • Crush the Oreos! You can use a food processor for this (no need to remove the cream filling), or crush them in a sealed ziplock bag. The smaller the crumbs, the more easily you'll be able to pipe swirls onto your cupcakes!
  • Fold the crushed Oreos into the buttercream.
Bowl of Oreo Buttercream with Spatula

Decorating the Oreo Cupcakes

We added simple frosting swirls to our Oreo Cupcakes using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.

I tried a piping tip first, and quickly realized that some of my crushed Oreo pieces were too large (I didn't use a food processor). That's why we went the snipped disposable piping bag route for our swirls. ;0) Easy peasy!

Piping swirls of Oreo Buttercream on top of Cupcakes
Oreo Cupcakes topped with Mini Oreos

Here is a peek at the inside! Delicious Oreo crumbs are suspended throughout the cupcake.

Finished cupcake, sliced in half to reveal inside
Platter of Oreo Cupcakes

Recipe FAQs

No, you do not need to remove the cream when making Oreo cupcakes, that would take forever!

It is not necessary to remove the cream from the Oreos before crushing them for the cupcakes or the Oreo Buttercream! Whether you are using a food processor or crushing Oreos with a rolling pin, the cream just mixes in with the chocolate crumbs and "disappears". ;0) 

Yes! Cake mix recipes are very forgiving. You can use this Oreo Cupcake cake batter to make an easy layer cake as well.

Yes! You can change this recipe to include chocolate cake mix and chocolate pudding for an extra chocolatey version of these Oreo Cupcakes!

These Oreo Cupcakes can sit at room temperature for a day in an airtight container as long as the temperature in your house isn't hot. Some decorators would say two days at room temperature is fine, but we like to play it safe.

If you refrigerate the cupcakes, for best flavor and texture, you can remove them from the refrigerator an hour or so before serving. This will allow the cake and frosting to warm and soften.

More Doctored Cake Mix Recipes

If you love the moist texture, convenience and consistency of delicious cake mix recipes, we have more cakes to share with you!

Some of our most popular are our Chocolate Mousse Cake, Strawberry Cake Mix recipe, Chocolate Caramel Cake, and so many more.

You must use the category slug, not a URL, in the category field.
Closeup of Oreo Cupcakes

Oreo Cupcakes (Doctored Cake Mix)

These moist, fluffy, flavorful Oreo Cupcakes are so easy to make as they start with a box of white cake mix! We topped them with Oreo Buttercream, but Chocolate Buttercream is a great choice as well. Keep these in mind for birthdays and other special occasions!
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 18 minutes
Course: Dessert
Servings: 28 cupcakes
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Ingredients

  • 1 (15.25 oz) White Cake Mix (We used Duncan Hines Moist White Cake)
  • ½ cup (60g) All Purpose Flour
  • ½ cup (100g) sugar
  • 1 (3.9 oz) small box Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix (We use Jello Brand-Do not make pudding, just add the dry powder)
  • 1 cup (242g) Sour Cream
  • ½ cup (108g) Vegetable Oil (we use canola)
  • 1 ¼ cup (302g) water
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 ½ teaspoons (10g) vanilla extract
  • Oreos, crushed (We used 10 cookies for the cake and 10 cookies for the frosting)
  • Mini Oreos- Optional Cupcake Toppers

For the Oreo Buttercream

  • 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened
  • 6-7 cups (690-805) grams confectioners sugar (depending on desired consistency.)
  • 2 tsp. (8g) vanilla extract
  • ¼ cup (60g) whole milk or cream- (Add a bit more as needed for desired consistency)
  • ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
  • Oreos- We used about 10 crushed Oreos for this recipe but use however many you'd like!

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
  • Crush Oreos and set aside. You can do this with a food processor or by adding the cookies to a ziplock bag and crushing with a rolling pin. (We used 10 in the cake batter. Adjust to your liking).
  • Place paper cupcake liners into the wells of your cupcake pan. (This recipe makes a total of 28 cupcakes)
  • In the bowl of your mixer, add the cake mix, all purpose flour, sugar, and pudding mix. Whisk to blend.
  • Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl. Mix on low speed for about 30 seconds.
  • Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed and mix on medium speed for two minutes.
  • The batter should look well blended. Fold in the crushed Oreos.
  • Scoop the batter into the lined cupcake pan. We filled each cupcake liner about ⅔ full- approximately ¼ cup each.
  • Bake at 350 for approximately 18 minutes or until the cupcakes spring back when lightly touched, or an inserted toothpick can be inserted and removed with just a few moist crumbs attached.
  • Remove the cupcakes from the pans soon after removing from the oven to prevent over-baking. (We usually wait 5 minutes or less).

For the Oreo Buttercream

  • Crush Oreos and set aside. (We used 10 Oreos, adjust amount to your liking).
  • Cream the (slightly softened) butter until smooth. Blend in the vanilla.
  • Add half of the powdered sugar and most of the milk. Beat at medium speed until the powdered sugar is incorporated.
  • Add remaining powdered sugar and milk and mix at medium speed another 3 to 4 minutes scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally. I slow down the mixer to very slow. (#2 on the KitchenAid) for 1 to 2 minutes. This will help eliminate air pockets in the buttercream. The texture will become very smooth.
  • Crush the Oreos. We used a food processor for a finer crumb so that the frosting would spread more easily. You can also place them in a Ziplock bag and crush with a rolling pin.
  • Fold Oreos into the buttercream.
  • This recipe can be doubled or halved.
  • Yields approximately 4 ½ cups of frosting.

Decorating the Cupcakes

  • Once the cupcakes have cooled, frost the cupcakes.
  • We had some variation in the size of our Oreo crumbs (since we used the ziplock bag method of crushing rather than a food processor)- and some of the crumbs were too large to pipe through a piping tip. For this reason, I loaded the frosting into a disposable piping bag and snipped away the tip with a large enough opening for some of the larger Oreo crumbs to flow through as I swirled the frosting.
  • We topped each cupcake with a mini Oreo.

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10 Comments

  1. I’ve made these cupcakes and they were a big hit with my family. My question is can bake this recipe in a tube pan?

    1. I'm glad that you enjoyed them! Yes, it should be no problem to bake in a bundt or tube pan. It will take longer to bake- probably closer to 30-35 minutes or so.

  2. I was just about to try your WASC Doctored recipe and add crushed Oreos to it., to make a small sheet cake. I know it would extend it more than this Cupcake recipe, since it uses more flour and sugar. But this Cupcake version uses more oil and water plus instant pudding. Do you think the WASC would work with adding Oreos or is this one better because of the additional oil, water and pudding?

    1. Hi Mary! Either recipe would work well for you, and would be similar. The pudding in the recipe does change the texture slightly, making it a bit softer.

    1. Hi Tracy, I haven't tried that before and so I'm just not sure. It would be an experiment! I hope you enjoy the recipe!

  3. 5 stars
    This was wonderful! I made it into 2- 9” round cakes and worked great. Plenty of frosting. I did grind my cookies up fine and it was delicious!