Homemade Oreos for Baking for Hospice

 

Procrastination is the thief of time. ~ Napoleon Hill

I'm supposed to be writing a genetics essay that's due this Friday but instead I looked up quotes on procrastination for this blog post.  Ironic.  The quotes are mostly all gloom and doom about how procrastination is bad yada yada yada but what the quotees have completely missed is this: Procrastination is fun.

I could've been looking up journal articles but instead I spent many a happy hour browsing Asos, Street Peeper, The Superficial, Tastespotting, not to mention all the food, fashion and design blogs I follow.  And now instead of essay writing, I am blogging.  Incidentally, blogging a post that I should have blogged about ages ago since the Baking for Hospice round I baked these Homemade Oreos for was waaaay back in July.

Yes, I am procrastinating by blogging about a recipe I have been procrastinating posting.  Poetic really.

The theme for the July round of Baking for Hospice was The US of A since baking day fell on 5 July (the day after Independence Day).  What could be more American than Oreo cookies? And I could not have asked for a better excuse to try this Smitten Kitchen recipe out that I've had my beady little eyes on for ages.  Yes, it seems the stars and stripes were aligned.

I am a huge fan of oreo cookies.  The dark crumbly salty sweetness of these iconic cookie sandwiches have a special place in my heart so this recipe had big shoes to fill.

The verdict? Homemade oreos were most definitely delicious.  But exactly like oreos they were not.

They were more like a yummy chocolatey cookie.  Not as crumbly as oreos, nor as salty sweet.  Just not quite as oreo-y as oreos.  Nevertheless, they were pretty tasty and the ones we kept for ourselves were gone in a blink.  Mainly to my belly.  Gotta be quick around me. Lightning fast eating reflexes is my super power.

Homemade Oreos

A Smitten Kitchen recipe.

makes around 30 cookie sandwiches

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup dark cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/5 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
142 g unsalted butter
1 large egg

1. Preheat the oven to 190 oC, making sure two racks are in evenly spaced the middle of the oven.  Line 2 cookie trays with baking paper.

2. In a food processor, whiz up the cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar.  Add the butter, pulsing to mix, then the egg and continue processing until the dough comes together as a lump.

3.  On a clean surface, roll out the cookie dough to around 5mm thick.  Using a round cookie cutter or top off a tube of spices (like this one) cut out 3.5 cm discs and place them on your prepared cookie trays around 2 inches apart.  Bake for 9 minutes, rotating top to bottom and back to front once to make sure the cookies cook evenly.  Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before icing and making into sandwiches.

Buttercream filling

60 g unsalted butter, room temperature.
60 g vegetable shortening (like Kremelta)
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla

1. Beat together butter and shortening until thoroughly mixed.  Gradually beat in icing sugar then vanilla on low speed.  Once everything is in the bowl, crank up your beaters to high speed and beat for 2 - 3 minutes to get the buttercream really fluffy.


2. To assemble: first match up all your cookies so that they are in pairs of similar shape and size.  Using a pastry bag with a large round nozzle, pipe the buttercream onto the middle of the bottom of one of the cookies (around a teaspoon size) then squish the filling with the second cookie until the filling reaches the edge of the cookies.  Keep cookies in a airtight container for up to a week.