jumping on the bandwagon

Remember how I wanted to bake donuts as a mini Dragon Age treat for Idle Husband's office? Well, after testing my fifth and final recipe (one that made exactly 3.5 donuts, I kid you not), I decided to scrap that idea altogether and make some generic cookies. At least I'd be able to whip out a large number of them with ease.

And then I saw the oreo baked into a chocolate chip cookie and yes. I had to go to there. Not because we're oreo lovers (if we're buying cookies, we're definitely not buying oreos) but because it was a novelty. See, at first I thought I might do bacon chocolate chip cookies. Just so I could get away with doing something simple while still impressing with crumbled bacon. But then I realized that if I put bacon into a cookie, there was probably a pretty good chance Idle Husband wouldn't even take the cookies to work. He'd squirrel them away all for himself.

The oreo idea seemed like the safe choice since neither of us will dip into the oreo bag unless we're really desperate and the effort to make something for his staff would still remain relatively low. So I thought, yeah. Let's do that.

I spent some time reading a review and comments here, and I learned a couple of things. First, eating the humongous cookie, oreo, cookie cookie was like going into a sugar coma; second, I wasn't really cool with making 24 gigantic super cookies; and finally, the chocolate chips overwhelmed the oreo taste (that wouldn't usually be a bad thing in my book). Someone in the comments suggested mini oreos which made me think mini chocolate chips and so I figured I'd probably be able to get more cookies out of the dough if I did it that way.

I used the original recipe instead of my own perfectly delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe just because I couldn't remember whether my recipe was prone to spreading or not. I found the original recipe to be good. I mean, typically tasting like a chocolate chip cookie. My dough turned out a little dry which made it frustrating to wrap each oreo, but I think that was partly due to my KitchenAid. (I recently discovered you can adjust your mixer head, so I've been fiddling around with it as it's always had a little trouble getting the bottom ingredients mixed in. I last adjusted it for the whisk and I guess I have to do it differently for the paddle.)

I baked them for 15 minutes, but I wish I had underbaked them by a couple minutes or so. Mine are crunchy and equal in crispness to the oreo, so I can't really notice a textural difference between the two.

We discovered that the softness comes back with a quick 5 minute stint in the toaster oven on toast. They are 100% better warm and soft.

I did use the mini oreo idea, so I got 48 perfectly regular sized cookies out of the dough. But now that I've tasted it, I think it's definitely better to use double-stuffed oreos. To keep them regular sized, I would cut them in half or in quarters. Unless there're double-stuffed mini oreos somewhere out there, you're not going to taste the filling at all.

I also reduced the chocolate chips to 1/2 cup and chopped them up a little in my food processor. I get a slightly chocolatey, slightly oreo-y taste to the cookie, neither flavour is overwhelming. (To be honest, to hell with the oreo flavour. I'd rather have more chocolate.)

If you want to do your own experiment (for the good of humanity, of course), check out the original recipe.