Roid-eos (Homemade Oreos)

Between trying to get through various nursing textbooks, keeping my house clean, watching the entire last season of House, MD to be ready for the new season, throwing the tennis ball for Layla, starting my workouts again and cleaning the fish tank, I've made it my mission (read: something I want to do occasionally) to turn all my favorite hydrogenated/high fructose corn syrup laden/over processed foods into homemade, more wholesome and non-chemical yumminess.  What better to start with than Oreos?

For homemade versions of, well, anything, I turn to my favorite baking goddess, Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.  She has a recipe for homemade Oreos that just about nails it, down to the frosting in the middle.  Apparently, however, I lack the necessary visual capacity to judge size.  Instead of cute little half-dollar sized cookies, I wound up with giant, Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie sized cookies on steroids.  In retrospect, I should have realized that these cookies will spread.  They're so big (how big are they?) that you have to break them in half to dunk.  But when you finally wrangle them into the milk...delish!

Nursing Diagnosis: Mug - smaller than cookie requirements.

Roid-eos

(shamelessly stolen from Smitten Kitchen)

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 cup sugar 

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 egg

In a large bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt and sugar until combined.  Add butter and egg, mix until dough forms a semi-sticky mass.  Roll a teaspoon (better to actually measure this instead of eyeballing it, unless you, unlike me, have some frame of visual-spacial reckoning) of dough into a ball, then lightly flatten into a circle.  Leave about 2 inches between the cookies.  Bake at 375 for 9 minutes, transfer to wire rack to cool.  Cool completely before icing.

Beside my awesome Frida Kahlo mug - Thanks Brad!

Filling

1/4 cup butter, room temperature

1/4 cup shortening (I used Crisco - no transfat!)

2 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat the butter and shortening together until completely incorporated.  Gradually add sugar and vanilla, alternating each.  Fill a pastry bag and pipe frosting in the center of  the bottom of one cookie.  Press a second cookie on top, allowing the filling to spread so that it covers the middle of the sandwich.  It can be easier, if your cookies came out a little uneven (some monster-sized, some dwarfs) to match them up before you add the frosting.

Dunk into milk.  Savor.  Repeat.  :o)

Dunk win!