Homemade Oreo Cookies

I love Oreos!  I know a few people who also love Oreos.  My friend, Mary, once pointed out to me how bad Oreos are.  I stopped buying them and have missed them!  In one of my late-night emails to our cousin Jessie we discussed our love of Oreos.  She shared with me that she found two different recipes for homemade Oreos.  According to Jessie the best of the two recipes is in the cookbook:  Make the Bread Buy the Butter

Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: Yes. Worth it.
Cost comparison: Homemade $0.16 per ounce. Nabisco $0.18 per ounce.

Cookie Ingredients:

1/2 lb. unsalted butter, melted (coconut oil can be a great substitute)
3/4 c sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder (I used all black cocoa powder so they really looked like Oreos!)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Filling: (I needed 1 1/2 batches of filling)
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 2/3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon milk
pinch of salt

1) In a mixing bowl, whisk together the butter & sugar. Add the vanilla & chocolate. Beat well. Add the egg and beat some more.

2. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, & baking soda. (I own a sifter and am too impatient to use it and it seemed fine) Pour remaining powder into the bowl & whisk to combine. Stir this into the chocolate mixture. It will look like a mistake – a tacky, fudgy brown mess. Don’t worry. Let it rest for 20 minutes at room temperature to firm up. (cover dough with plastic wrap to avoid drying up)

3. Transfer the dough to a piece of waxed paper. Shape it into a long log – about 22 inches long and 1 3/4 inches in diameter the dough is sticky but if you briskly & lightly roll it back & forth on the waxed paper, you will end up with a log. If the dough starts to stick to the paper, transfer it to a new piece of waxed paper. Once you have a log of dough, try to make it as smooth & even as you can. You are trying to replicate cookies made by a machine. Refrigerate the waxed paper covered log of dough for a few hours, or overnight, until very firm.

4. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper. Cut the dough into scan 1/4-inch slices. Place them on the cookie sheet. They can be as close as 1/4 – inch apart so pack them on there. (My first pan I did 1/4 in slices and they ran together, my next batch I cut much smaller – Oreo cookie size and then I could pack them on but they needed less baking time)

5. Bake for 20-25 minutes (Mine were done sooner at 12-15 min) until they’re cakey but firm when you press with the tip of your finger. Cool completely on a rack.

6. To make the filling: Beat all the ingredients together until perfectly smooth. Spread onto the cooled cookies, about 2 teaspoons per cookie. Store the cookies at room temperature in a cookie tin for up to five days.

Makes 2-3 dozen.

Nola Mae approves of these cookies.  When Jack tasted the cookies he asked me, “Did
you really smash Oreos just to make these frosted cookies?”

Related articles

• Homemade Oreos Recipe (cookbookmanila.wordpress.com)
• Oreos (cutoutandkeep.net)

June 2013 – Month 6

We started our summer off with the boys signing up for the summer reading program at our local libraries.  We may not attend many activities or hand in our reading logs into the Iola library because we visit the library where our favorite librarian works.   I put up the little pockets for each child on the door for their reading logs.  They can check off their 20 minutes of reading and we never forget to grab them when we are heading to the library!

The sales of  my beeswax body balms and healing balm have been a huge hit with many of my family, friends and friends of my friends.  Thank you for supporting me and the things I love to make!

Charlie went to a friend’s birthday party and I made this cute bag for his gift.

I found some dried grass and some of my broom corn in the grill one day and blamed it on Henry.  I talked to him about leaving the grill alone.   We cleaned it out.  Then a few days later we opened the grill to make dinner and found this awesome nest built out of things that came from all over our yard – leaves, dried grass, broom corn from inside the garage and a lot of the dried stems from my last year’s morning glories that were in the compost pile.  This mama was busy!

When Henry woke up the morning after Mr. Ernst baled the hay field during the night Henry said, “Yep, Mr. Ernst put marshmallows in the field last night.  BIG MARSHMALLOWS!”

Jack was cleaning out the gutters and left the ladder up.   I saw Henry heading for the ladder and asked him to not climb it because Nola Mae might follow him.  I grabbed the camera because I wanted to take a picture of the boy who hasn’t been listening.  I was going to do a blog post about this, because I needed to find some humor in our incredibly independent 4-year-old, who has his own way of doing everything.  I never got it done because I couldn’t find the time to do it. 

A dear friend of the family passed away un-expectantly this month.  After hearing the news I decided we needed to do something that we don’t do very often, fly Charlie’s dragon kite.

We had an afternoon of kickball with me being the “all time pitcher” and the kids kicking the ball and running bases for as long as I can keep up.  I was talking about quitting soon and they were not even close to wanting to stop.  My idea to slow them down so I could maybe catch them once in a while was for them to give Nola Mae a kiss when they passed her.

     

We have been having a little drama here lately.  I heard some whimpering from that same independent 4-year-old that I mentioned earlier, while I was in the living room nursing Nola Mae.  I knew there wasn’t an injury (no screaming or sound of a thump) and I knew that there weren’t any older brothers around teasing him, so I tried to get him to talk to me from the other room.   When I finally came into the room this is what I found…all I could think of is the Wicked Witch of West under Dorothy’s house (maybe because my book club recently read Wicked).

What is wrong with this picture?/What is good about this picture?

Baby is on the table./Baby is after fruit.

Big brothers not noticing baby on the table./Brothers sharing a chair and not fighting.

Door is wide open./Extra sunlight is coming into the house, no electricity needed.

Nola Mae in June, at 14 months old.

 

      

 

It is hard to capture Nola Mae in one place so behind the camera I need brothers to make her smile.  They agreed to have their picture taken with her.

I started a jobs list for the boys, mostly paid jobs for them of jobs that I hate to do.  Vacuuming is one of the top 5 jobs I hate.  Vacuuming the stairs rarely gets done.  I showed Robbie and Charlie how I expect the stairs to be vacuumed and Charlie wasn’t interested in listening how I do it, but Robbie was.   I asked Robbie to wrap up the cord and put the vacuum away when he was done.  This is what I got…

My sister, Danna, came to visit us this month.  We took her to our favorite place, but the water was too high for us to play.

Another weekend, Jack’s brother Eddie came to visit with his extra-large chainsaw.  Our oak tree in the pasture died within the last two years.  This summer is when we are finally getting to that job.

Before:

During:

After:

A couple of days later we took the kids down in the pasture so I could see the tree.  Jack took these great photos of them.

Our first picking of strawberries from our patch.

There was one day (yes, just one day!) that I actually sat down with a cup of coffee and my book.  If I remember correctly it wasn’t for very long, I will appreciate that little bit of time I had on the deck.  My book now stays on my night stand for my late night reading.

I am thankful for a sweet husband who is handy and can fix my breaks as soon as he realizes they are going bad.

I don’t know what to say about this one.   You may think I am a bad parent for letting my kid fall asleep like this, but at least I know his teeth were brushed at bedtime.

I have been busy sewing this month.  I took on a sewing job for a friend who does event planning and decorating.  I don’t know that she has a webpage, but she does have a Facebook page.  These are the beautiful fabrics I am working with:

The ring slings I made this month:

This one is for me and Nola Mae while at the beach.

I walked into a restaurant in Stevens Point with Nola Mae in my plum-colored ring sling and a mom of a new baby asked me where she could get one of those.  I told her about the ring sling, Maya Wrap and also mentioned that she could make one because I made mine.  She asked me to make one for her.  We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers.

Then I got orders to make two more.