My First Post!

This is my first post! How exciting!!
Anyways, for my FIRST post, I have made Homemade Oreos.  That's right, homemade.
I have been exploring other people's baking blogs and I saw that several had made their own homemade oreos.  They looked delicious and I couldn't resist trying them myself.  Since I am a very amateur baker, I figured this would be a nice simple first attempt.
I found the recipe at Sugar Cooking.
Being a beginner, I have not yet acquired everything I need, so I had to make adjustments.  I did not have all-purpose flour or baking powder.  And the baking soda I had, I have had for a while and I am scared to use it.  So I just substituted it with Self Rising flour and left out the baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

So once I gathered all my ingredients, I started mixing them all together

Now it was time to roll the dough into balls and bake them.  I used one of those cookie scooper things.  They remind me of ice cream scoops except they are made just for cookies.  It helps get all your cookies about the same size and they are then in ball form already so I didn't have to get my hands too dirty.

While they were baking I started to get all the ingredients for the icing together. The cookies cook for such a short time that I didn't start making the icing yet.  So now it was time to take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool.

While I let the cookies cool, I started making the icing.

Once the cookies were cool I put on the icing and found a match for each cookie.  Now I had myself some homemade oreos.  ^_^

Before I could even get finished with putting icing on all of the cookies, my sister was in the kitchen asking if she could have one.  I took one to my mom and she ate it and said "I don't think you can have just one!!"
So needless to say, I think they turned out good.  My icing tasted very vanilla-ny, so I don't know if that was something I did or what.  I will just go a little lighter next time.

Here is the recipe Copied and Pasted DIRECTLY from Sugar Cooking.  All the notes are from there.  None of it is mine.

Recipe: Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients:
For the chocolate wafers:

• 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 to 1 1/2 cups sugar**
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1 large egg

For the filling:

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

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. 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. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

*I used Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate. It's a mix of natural and dutch process cocoas. I really like how it came out because it made the cookies dark just like real oreos. I also read A LOT of the comments on Smitten Kitchen's original post and it seems that the general consensus is that regular unsweetened cocoa powder will work just fine.
** I went right in the middle and used 1 1/4 cups and this was the perfect sweetness for me. 

Thanks for reading!  More posts are coming soon!!! 

--Brittany

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