Making Milk’s Favorite Cookie

Commercials, taxes, politicians….these are unfortunately necessary evils in our lives. Okay, maybe not politicians, but taxes and commercials (or advertisements in general) certainly are. And unfortunately for us, commercials have just been getting more and more annoying (Geico, anyone?)

Thankfully not only do we now have dvr to fast forward through them, but there are a few companies that continue to make charming or entertaining commercials. For example, this oreo commercial.

It makes me smile every time and it does it’s job by making me suddenly want oreos. I’ve been holding on to this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for a while now. I was actually going to save this to make for a friend but decided I needed something just like it this weekend.

I made a tiny mistake making these, but considering it was a mistake I could fix easily with more chocolate, I am not really complaining 🙂

Homemade Oreos
Source: Smitten Kitchen

For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

For the filling:
1/4 cup room-temperature, unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 375F

2. In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar, then 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. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set 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 2-3 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.

6. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk. Enjoy.

Make sure you use vegetable shortening. I used butter flavored, and it made the cream very yellow so I just added a teaspoon of cocoa powder. You can do that anyways if you want more chocolate 🙂

I also highly recommend matching the cookies into pairs before you start adding the cream to any of them, just to make sure you can get them all close. Either that or roll out the dough and cut them all to make sure they’re all even, which I just might do next time.

No matter how you make them, these things really are as good as the original, and definitely worth the effort 🙂