Homemade Oreos

Even though it’s already been posted on a few sites, fabulous recipes are meant to be shared! I found this on Smitten Kitchen first, then Nosh With Me. Both came with such soaring reviews that I couldn’t pass up the idea for Father’s Day, and my dad’s a big Oreo fan. Thanks to both sites for sharing what is now a new favorite!

Homemade Oreos

Cookie Ingredients:

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened baking cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 to 1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

Filling Ingredients:

¼ cup (½ stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
¼ cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375 degrees.

To make the cookies: In a food processor or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing or on low speed, add the butter and then the egg. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.

Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, approximately 2 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.

To make the filling: 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 2-3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.

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.

Enjoy as any Oreo should be - dunked in a large glass of milk!
Makes 25-30 sandwich cookies (I got 38 out of my batch).

Notes:

Smitten Kitchen suggests limiting the sugar in the cookies to 1 cup, instead of 1 ½. It depends on how sweet you ant them. I went the middle route and did about 1 ¼ to play it safe.

The recipe calls for “unsweetened Dutch process cocoa.” I found Ghirardelli unsweetened baking cocoa on sale and figured it’d work just fine. It did!

Make sure your baking sheets are cool in between sets of cookies. Cookies on the top rack came out crinklier than the ones on bottom, so it’s worthwhile to switch halfway through if you want them uniform.