Recipilicious

Well, since I’m making everything from scratch these days, I hadn’t had a real cookie in a long time so I made these.  To make this recipe a little more vegeterian I excluded butter and used vegetable shortening instead (crisco); worked great! You can also use soymilk and imitation eggs for yummy vegan cookies!

Makes 15 “Oreos”.

Each cookie: 100 calories.

Oreo Filling: 142 calories.

By extension then, each oreo has 342 calories.

Ingredients:

Chocolate Cookie:

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg (room temperature)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water or coffee

Vanilla Filling:

• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar (granulated sugar will work too, just makes a slightly “crunchy” filling—I like it)
• 1-3 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and place oven rack in center of oven.
2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking power & soda, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy (a hand mixer works best, but I do this by hand as well).
4. Mix the skim milk and water/coffee in a small cup and alternately combine flour mixture and water/coffee mixture to butter and sugar (begin and end with flour).
5. Next drop heaping tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet (spread at least 1” apart. Shape cookies like discs).
6. Bake for 9-10 minutes or until tops of cookies spring back when lightly pressed. Cool on wire rack.
7. Meanwhile, beat shortening until soft and creamy gradually beating in sugar.  Beat until light and fluffy (at least 5 minutes).  Then, gradually beat in vanilla (to taste) and corn syrup.  Continue to beat until filling looks like mayonnaise.
8. To assemble, spread a heaping dose of sugar mixture onto a cookie and top with another cookie.  Repeat and enjoy!