Homemade Oreos


I'd always been curious how homemade Oreos might turn out. Because, let's face it, Oreos are delicious. But who really knows what exactly goes into those blue plastic packages? So, at one point, wanting to use up some butter and shortening, I looked up a recipe.


Chocolate Cookies:

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter (room temperature)
1 large egg (room temperature)

Directions

1. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar.
2. Beat in the butter and the egg. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately 2 inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. (I decided to use cookie cutters instead: first, divide the dough into 2-3 sections, flatten/roll out each, and then use cookie cutters to cut the dough. I used scalloped circle cutters, though the edges simply rounded out while baking. I'd love to see someone use square cutters or something though!)
4. Bake for 9 minutes at 375 F. Set on a rack to cool.

The Filling:

Ingredients

1/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted powdered sugar (I hardly ever sift - I'm lazy! - so I skipped that here as well)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla.
2. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2-3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
3. To make a cookie, pipe blobs of cream into the center of a cookie using a pastry bag (or, in my case, a big Ziploc bag with the corner cut.) (Depending on the size of your cookies, the amount of cream will vary - I needed some trial and error to get the right ratio!)
4. 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.

My "oh-so-professional" filling technique:


Now, I might have underbaked these a little, but they didn't come out crunchy as Oreos are. I didn't mind this at all - I generally prefer softer cookies - but remember to adjust the baking time according to your preferences! The filling was extremely sweet, as is to be expected, but in a different way from traditional Oreos, probably a result of the mass-produced ones containing different kinds of sugar in the filling. What I was fascinated by was how close, texturally, this filling was to the actual Oreo filling: once the filling is piped and sandwiched, it rapidly begins to "set" and soon reaches a semi-solid state almost exactly like the filling in storebought Oreos. That discovery was probably my favorite part of making these cookies!

And just look how lovely they are:


And not a single wordy artificial ingredient in sight. How can you resist?
(I mean, let's forgo the shortening debate for the moment.)

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