Oreos

Oreos are not my favorite cookie.  In fact, I generally enjoy fruity desserts more than chocolate.  But my husband loves Oreos and I'll be shipping most of these out as part of the Great Cookie Swap. 

If you haven't heard, the Great Cookie Swap is a food blogger event, where bloggers make cookies, send them to other bloggers, and get a bunch in return.  Cookies in the mail??  How exciting!  And look at this mountain of cookies in the works:

So anyways... The store brand: Oreos. (Nabisco)

My recipe: (From http://www.smittenkitchen.com/)

For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar [see recipe note]

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter

1 large egg

For the filling:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

- Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.

- In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar.

- While pulsing, add the butter, and then the egg and process until it forms a mass.

- Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set cookies on a rack to cool.

- 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 to 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. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

And the outcome?  The cookies were great.  I guess I expected them to be soft and more like a whoopie pie, but the chocolate cookies were really crunchy, just like an Oreo (after a day in a container, they got soft from the filling and I think they were even better that way)!  The filling was better than the competitor - and I filled them almost to the point of a double stuffed Oreo.  I said I wasn't a huge fan of Oreos... but I could eat 10 of these.

The cost was actually pretty interesting.  With all the butter, vanilla, and cocoa powder, I thought the store bought version would cost much less to buy.  It was close, but the homemade cookie came in at just a few pennies more per cookie (they were also a little larger):

	Cookies	Cost	Cost/Cookie
Oreos	30	$      4.39	$          0.15
Homemade	28	$      5.14	$          0.18

So, my opinion here is if you are going to eat a cookie, it might as well be delicious and you should have to work for it (a little).  This recipe was made entirely in the food processor and the filling was really easy.  So come on, go the extra mile for your desserts, and earn those calories!

Bake or Buy? BAKE!