Homemade Oreos

Thanks for bearing with me last week. Please know that I love you all for sticking with me through a random non-baking update and being kind about it! Also, glad to hear from others who occasionally try to be crafty as well. I will post pics of the final product of my furious amounts of crocheting soon. I would have put it in this update but I don’t have any good pictures of it yet and I would hate to delay a food update again due to the scarf.

Soon!

In the meantime, let’s get back to business.

Oreos out of the oven instead of the packet. It exists and I baked some.

Chocolate dough, flattened and filled with a sweet, stiff vanilla cream. Just like the real thing.

Almost.

Have you ever had that one friend who doesn’t really like anything you bake because they think it’s not quite right? And by “not quite right” they mean it’s “not like my mom used to make”? Nostalgia is an extremely powerful thing. It can completely define how we react to certain situations and objects if compared to a childhood memory.

These cookies are not exactly like Oreos. The cookies are slightly less hard/crumbly and the icing is a little creamier than the stiff little sugar disc you find between  your chocolate cookies.

Usually that description would be evidence for these being a superior cookie to the packaged Oreo. Less hard and more creamy are traits which are strived for in a baked good. But then nostalgia kicks me in the butt. When I want an Oreo, I want an Oreo. I want a cookie that needs to be held in milk for 5 full, long seconds before it can claim an adjective like “soft”. I want the cream to be so stiff that it takes at least a dozen licks to clear my way through to the opposite cookie.

Is this a good cookie? Yes, yes it is. Is it an Oreo? It’s so close.

Recipe from smitten kitchen

Chocolate Wafers

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1 large egg

Filling

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening (don’t replace this with butter, even though your instincts say otherwise. It helps keep the filling stiff, even at room temperature)
• 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
2. In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream.

Makes approx. 25-30 sandwich cookies.

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