I LOVE Oreos, but everyone in our house can’t eat them and they rank preeeeeetty high on the list of processed foods. We’ve learned so much over the past few years about artificial colors and dyes and have firsthand seen some of the effects that they can have in children. So for the most part, we don’t have any food items in our kitchen with artificial dyes. Seems a bit unfair to buy a package of Oreo cookies and tell one of your children that they can’t have any.
Enter these Homemade Oreos.
I almost always make these at Christmas time so I completely think of them as a holiday food in my head. They’re actually pretty easy to make and so delicious. I had a recipe from another blog that I made for years, but at this moment, that blog has a virus that won’t let me access it, so I had to improvise. I found a couple of other recipes and reworked them to what I think was my original recipe. I decided I wanted to publish mine so that I could access it anytime I wanted to, thank you very much.
Here’s the recipe:
Chocolate cookies:
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 sticks (10 tbsp) softened butter
1 egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
Filling:
1/4 cup softened butter
¼ cup shortening (or just use ½ cup of butter)
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (or peppermint)
Instructions:
Add all of the dry ingredients into your mixer bowl and then blend with the egg and butter. Once it’s all combined, THEN add the flour. Flour should always be added last because if flour is overmixed, it will produce a limp, flattened cookie.
Bake on 375 for 7 minutes.
Some tips:
I cut the sugar down from most recipes. We don’t notice the difference, but if you aren’t used to reducing sugar, add another ¼ cup to your cookie dough.
IMPORTANT: Roll the balls of dough and then press them flat between your palms before placing them on the cookie sheet. The flattened dough should be about the size of a small stack of quarters. No wider...or you’ll have GIANT cookies. (unless you want giant cookies and then go ahead)
If you’re not fancy like us, just fill up a ziplock bag with your icing and, I must be living under a rock because THIS is the easiest ever way to put icing into a bag (above). Cut off the bottom corner and fill up those babies!
