homemade oreos

In honour of National Oreo Day I thought it fitting to re-run this post from 2011. I originally wrote this post for the Sweet Potato Chronicles and it has proven to be one of their most popular stories of all time. I guess there is no denying the love for the Oreo. And what could be better than making your very own.

Home­made Oreos (Adapted from Retro Desserts, Wayne Brach­man via Smit­ten Kitchen)
(My com­ments in brackets!)

Makes 25 to 30 sand­wich cook­ies
For the choco­late wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweet­ened Dutch process cocoa (Fry’s Cocoa Pow­der will work in Canada)
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 icing sugar
2 tea­spoons vanilla extract

1. Set two racks in the mid­dle of the oven. Pre­heat to 375°F.
2. In a food proces­sor, or bowl of an elec­tric mixer, thor­oughly mix the flour, cocoa, bak­ing soda and pow­der, salt, and sugar. While puls­ing, or on low speed, add the but­ter, and then the egg. Con­tinue pro­cess­ing or mix­ing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded tea­spoons of bat­ter and place on a parch­ment paper-lined bak­ing sheet approx­i­mately two inches apart. (I started off with loonie sized chunks of dough which was too big. It’s more like the size of a quar­ter. Remem­ber, you’re aim­ing for 50 to 60 of these indi­vid­ual wafers!) With moist­ened hands, slightly flat­ten the dough. Bake for 9 min­utes, rotat­ing once for even bak­ing. Set bak­ing sheets 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 to 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. (I don’t think it’s entirely nec­es­sary to use a pas­try bag. You could just spoon some icing on and squeeze between two wafers.) Con­tinue this process until all the cook­ies have been sand­wiched with cream.