O - R - E - O!

I have a fantastic recipe for homemade Oreo cookies. It was given to me by my friend Katie who also gave me the pizza dough recipe and pizza sauce recipe. These cookies taste more like those new Oreo Cakesters cookies than traditional Oreo cookies, but Katie was making this recipe long before those imposters came out.

Homemade Oreo Cookies
makes about three dozen

2 boxes devil’s food cake mix
1 1/3 cups shortening
4 eggs
Cream cheese frosting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix all ingredients together except the cream cheese frosting. The dough will be stiff. Once dough is combined, roll dough into balls of any size. I usually use a teaspoon to dip out the dough. It is best to try to make the dough balls approximately the same size. Place dough balls on cookie sheets and bake for approximately 8-10 minutes or until done. Allow cookies to cool on cookie sheets for a couple minutes then remove to cooling racks or paper towels.

Once all cookies are baked and cooled, frost the backside of one cookie with as much cream cheese frosting as you like and top with another cookie to make a sandwich. Voila!

I have made these cookies several times and I ALWAYS get tons of compliments on them. They are really rich so you can only eat one or two.

Variations? I have not tried this yet, but I imagine these cookies would be fantastic with peanut butter in the middle instead of cream cheese frosting. If someone tries this please let me know how it goes.

It is my goal to make these cookies completely from scratch sometime in the future. I would not use the cake mixes or canned frosting. The frosting part would not be too hard, but figuring out the cake mix part will require a little time and perhaps a few batches of cookies to work out the kinks. But I will repost this recipe at some point that doesn’t use any prepackaged items.

So is it worth it? These cookies taste excellent, but they take awhile to make. They are great to take to barbeques, parties or to the office for someone’s birthday and they look and taste a lot better than packaged Oreos. However they are not really any cheaper to make compared to buying a pack of Oreos at the store.

Bottom line – make these for a large group gatherings. Depending on the size of your family, if you made these just for eating at home you might not eat them fast enough because they are so rich. You could also freeze them individually and then stow these special treats in lunches or picnics.

I will admit that I still buy Oreos on occasion. There’s something about an Oreo that’s comforting to me. However I will only buy double stuffed Oreos, which taste best dunked in a cold glass of milk (of course!).