Homemade Oreos

So, I totally love baking, right? (obviously, or I wouldn't dedicate a whole freaking blog to it!). But that whole... baking a whole bunch of the same things (booooring) and then that wrecking a bunch of recipes (frightening) will dishearten a girl a bit.

I mean, I loved making the cookies and the brownies, but when you have recipe after recipe not turn out the way you wanted... you get a little depressed and then you realize you don't have time to be depressed, because you've got to make another kind of cookie for the party and ASAP.

Enter Homemade Oreos.

Screw the fruit cookie, let's make something kitchy instead. Right?

Luckily, my friend Steph came over the night that I finally gave up on the Rugelach Pinwheels and I think she probably just had the intention of letting me borrow some of her cookie sheets, sitting down at my bar and cracking up at me covered in flour, lamenting about the woes of baking. Little did she know... she was going to help me make Homemade Oreos. And by "help" I mean, measure all the ingredients, mix them and put them on the baking sheet while I supervised.
Fellow bakers shouldn't be so slim and cute and have cute victoria beckham haircuts, right? Right.

So, she really helped me out that night. I was at my wits end and I just finished putting a whole batch of those pinwheel cookies down the disposal when she got there. It was nice, because she helped me just kind of have a "who cares?" attitude and not worry about wasting all that money and time on those damn cookies that I screwed up.

We had fun. She's one of my oldest and dearest friends and it's nice to get to spend a tuesday night baking with your best friend.

So, back to the cookies. These are exactly like oreos, y'all!!!!! They are crunchy and the icing in the middle is dry-ish and they are perfect! Although, I must admit, I kind of liked them a little softer (I put some white bread in the ziploc back with them to soften them up a bit). YUM YUM YUM.

And thanks to Steph and Homemade Oreos.... Christmas was officially saved (or at least my parents christmas party).

Whoopie Pies

I have never really thought much about whoopie pies. I've never had homemade ones. Never seen homemade ones and never even knew that they were called whoopie pies... I thought they were just chocolate creme cookies. Like, a little debbie oatmeal creme pie, except with chocolate cookies, instead of oatmeal.

But, reading Cookie Madness I saw a post from her about homemade whoopie pies and they intrigued me. I kind of dismissed them initially. But, I found myself thinking about them more and more and finally I decided, they would be a fun addition to SQB's Birthday Cookies.

When the cookie part first came out of the oven, frankly, I was a little disappointed, the cookies tasted salty to me. Not as sweet as I had hoped for.

But, after they sat overnight with the creme filling inside them. Wow!!!! They became very delicious. These are awesome! They are soft and moist cookies and the creme inside is fluffy and sweet, but not cotton candy sweet- just right sweet. A great recipe that I will definitely make again when I am looking to impress people. (They weren't hard at all to make!) Apparently, I'm not the only one that thinks they are good, I got a text message from SQB after she had tried them that said... "OMFG the whoopie pies are soooo good!"

My work here is done.

Recipe is here (I made the amish version).

(I apologize for my picture taking skills... they suck lately. I take like 15 pics per item and I'm struggling to find one good one out of all of them! Uggh).