Childhood favorite

Growing up Mom had three canisters sitting on the counter when you first walked into the kitchen. One had flour, one had sugar, and the other held cookies. I remember some chocolate or strawberry wafers thrown in for variety, but almost always it was filled with Oreos. I have probably eaten my weight in Oreos. Twice.
 
...Maybe three times if you count the chocolate covered mint ones we got special at Christmastime.  At least it got me to drink milk??

A couples days ago, SmittenKitchen posted a recipe for Rhubarb Streusel Muffins.  I salivated over them as I read the recipe and reminded my boyfriend, yet again, that he is supposed to bring me rhubarb from his garden so I could bake something to take camping over Memorial Day Weekend. But I got distracted by the link to the recipe four years ago: Homemade Oreos.  So, with full knowledge that there was no way one batch would last from Monday night until the weekend, I made them anyway.

I fully intended to take pictures, but I forgot. It was late at night anyway and pictures would have been crappy. Then half of them were gone by morning. Oops.

So, for the sake of this blog post, I made another batch last night!  And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...

Homemade Oreos
Accidentally modified from Smitten Kitchen

Chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup sugar (or 1 cup plus whatever accidentally fell in from the sugar pot)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 egg

Cream filling:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup shortening, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

To make the wafers, preheat oven to 375. Mix all dry ingredients, including sugar, which is technically a wet ingredient.  Add butter and egg and mix like crazy.  When you start mixing it will get kind of clumpy and look like this:

But if you keep mixing.... and keep mixing.... and keep mixing, it will eventually turn into a crumbly dough:

Spoon rounded teaspoons of dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Press mounds flat with the bottom of a glass or measuring cup.  Bake for 9 minutes (Quicker and easier to bake two cookie sheets at once on middle two oven racks - just switch racks halfway through baking to make sure they're even).  Place on rack to cool.

To make the filling, cream butter and shortening.  Add powdered sugar in 1/2 cup increments, mixing well between additions.  Add 1 tsp of vanilla after you reach 1 cup and 2 cups.  Continue to beat filling for several minutes to make it light and fluffy.

To make sandwiches, fill a small plastic baggie with cream filling. Cut off the tip of the baggie to squeeze out filling. Pipe desired amount of cream on wafer and top with wafer of the same size. I piped a little over a teaspoon onto each cookie and had plenty of filling left over - from both batches of oreos!

Take note, this filling is delightful slathered on a graham cracker. Having extra is not a bad thing! Or instead of vanilla, you can add peppermint extract to the cream filling and have special holiday oreos! YES!



In other life news, I took some pictures of the yard I'll be moving to shortly. Not great pictures, but at least they give an idea of what I'll be working with. New raised beds may be in my future...