Chocolate Creme Filled Cookies A.K.A "Oreos"

Dan got a craving for Oreos. Normally I'll ignore his junk food cravings but we didn't have any sweets and this one was calling to me as well. Instead of going to the store I suggested we make some instead. He gives me an incredulous look and says if we didn't have any refrigerated dough, how were we going to make cookies? I tell him we'll make it from scratch and at this point we look at each other like the other has a third eye we just noticed. It has never occurred to him to make cookies from scratch and I know for a fact his mother bakes almost a million cookies every year.

After we overcome our shock, we get right to mess up the beautiful clean kitchen. I looked through my cute cook book on cookies (pictured left). Dan overlooks my shoulder and I can't find a good chocolate cookie recipe. He points out all the recipes call for store bought dough anyways. Oh well.

(I made the cookies on the cover one time. Aren't they adorable?! An ex-acquaintance snobbishly told me I had too much time on my hands if I could make those. But since it was refrigerated dough it didn't actually take as long as she thought.)

We didn't have a recipe so I just googled one until I could find one I liked and came across this Martha Stewart one which I didn't follow closely. I just needed the ratio of ingredients to be honest.

Our stand mixer was somewhere in the utility closet and since it's an off brand, the flour still flies every direction and is no easier than hand mixing the batter.

However if I were to do it differently I would have set the butter and cream cheese out to soften before hand. Those were a pain!

On the Martha Stewart website she's got a recipe for the filling but since I didn't have any shortening I googled a different recipe. Of course I can't find it now but I remember it so it's all good. Since I used cream cheese, the cookies have to be refrigerated.

         Chocolate Cookies:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder (I actually used some chocolate a friend got me from Abu Dhabi)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups sugar, plus more for flattening cookies
• 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg, room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients.
3. In a separate bowl beat the sugar and butter together. (This was HARD. Softened butter would have been easier but I didn't pre-plan this craving so I made it through just fine.)
4. Then mix all the ingredients together.
5. Roll the dough into little balls. (They have to be small so when they flatten out they are oreo size. They won't be flat like oreos but flat enough.)
6. Bake for 9 minutes. (MS says bake 10-12 minutes but I like my cookies a little soft and my oven cooks hot so 9 minutes was perfect.)

We only own one cookie sheet so while the first batch baked we put together the cream cheese filling.


           Cream Cheese Filling:

• 8 oz of Cream Cheese (SOFTENED)
• 1/2 lb of butter (SOFTENED)
• 4 cups of powered sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

I couldn't believe the amount of sugar so I tripled checked and it just seemed outrageous but I followed the instructions. It makes my teeth hurt just typing that!

If you have a large bowl and a hand mixer go ahead and use it. Unfortunately ours is a bit crazy so we don't use it. That's what you get when you buy cheap! It has 7 "speeds" but really setting "1" is like turning on a motor boat. Dan asked if I was sure I wasn't on the top speed by mistake so I rev-ed it to to "7" for him. I'm pretty sure his eyeballs jumped from his socket. LOL. We abandoned the hand mixer and opted for Liz muscle instead. Meanwhile first batch of cookies finished and Dan not so sly sampled one. I guess he didn't figure they would be screaming HOT. He didn't whimper though. What a trooper. He rolled the next set while I was still mixing the frosting. I finally finished and put it in the fridge to firm up a bit.

Meanwhile we sped cleaned the kitchen while the second batch was in the oven.

I think it was 3 or 4 batches total. We left them to cool and played some video games. Then we came back and frosted them with a small dollop with spoons. We had a ton of frosting left over so I'll buy some cinnamon buns today so we can frost them with the leftovers.

Man, this memoir of a blog took a lot longer than I expected. Time for a cookie! :D