The Book
Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe | Joanne Chang
(Chronicle Books, 2010)
The Recipe
Homemade Oreos
The Reason
Because they’re Oreos. I’m not sure what more reason I’d need, to be honest. Given that my flatmate has to eat at least some of what I bake, he also approved the suggestion.
The Cooking
The cookie dough was super easy to mix because you do it with melted butter and melted chocolate, so there’s none of the strenuous hours of beating to get solid butter into a whipped state. I didn’t have enough cocoa powder, so had to run to the shop and get some, which conveniently allowed time for the butter and chocolate to cool. I try to be good and avoid contributing to the commercial behemoth that is Tesco, but having one about a minute’s walk from the flat does place temptation and convenience in the path. Especially when the night bus stops right outside it and you can stagger in and buy a sandwich when drunkity.
Anyway. The mixing stage was easy. The next, slightly harder, because you have to roll the dough into a log and mine didn’t seem quite firm enough. Which, I realise as I post this, is possibly because I didn’t put the egg in. Only one, but I missed it. We’ll see how this works out… The smell is definitely right, if that counts for anything. That really intense ‘black’ smell of Oreos is present and correct.
They seem to be holding together pretty well considering the absence of egg. The heat distribution in my oven is totally messed up, so they cooked a little unevenly, and I had to do them in batches because, again, it seems to make a lot for a domestic oven. I could probably just adjust down, but I’m not quite confident to do that yet, even though it’s a pretty straightforward process.
I did mess around with the filling. Joanne Chang gives a recipe for vanilla filling or for peanut butter, so I kind of just split the difference, and made half vanilla and half peanut butter. That’s about the level of customisation I can handle right now.
The result
Gurgle. Like I mentioned, they cooked unevenly and ended up different shapes and sizes. But none were burnt and none were undercooked. So that’s something. And they 90% held together, so screw you egg! I don’t need your binding capabilities!
They look like this: 
.
They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, really really rich. They’re crunchier than a cake, but softer than a biscuit. They do that mouth-coating thing Oreos do. I really need more visitors to eat these things. I’mma get fat(ter).
ieatdinner 