Ok. I'm just going to lay this out there for all your readers. If you read my first guest post back in June, you'll see that I've experimented with a little cake decorating in my day.
And in my day, I mean once.
Here's the deal: both of us Lore sisters love to bake and are all about healthy foods and whole grains.
But Amy--she's the fabulous cake lady. Me? I'm just the cookie monster.
Now, I wasn't one of those kids who was rewarded with a cookie every time I did something good. My mother was all about moderation. But I remember Christmas after Christmas, she would spend hours and days in the kitchen baking up mounds of cookies and candies. I was always right there, attached to her leg trying to steal the beaters when she was finished with a dough or swiping my finger in the icing bowl. Mother wore the blue checkered apron, and I wrapped the matching pink one around me several times just to tie it tight. I always knew a flour war would ensue.
I always felt like each one of those cookies had been made especially for me. It was the individual-ness, the specialness that made me fall in love with a cookie.
When I got married last year, my cookie recipe box was pretty full with family favorites, most homemade and simple and always, always delicious. Now as I nurture the foundation of those family recipes, I'm starting to add some more complicated and even some new healthy favorites that my own little family enjoys.
Most bakers I know are not big fans of cookies, mainly because there's often more than one pan involved. Bakers have to reload cookie sheets, reset timers, and bake in rounds, but I think the repetition is what I enjoy so much about baking cookies. I fall into a rhythm, and I often soothe myself by learning to feel when the cookies are done. And when I'm baking family recipes, feeling in my soul when the cookie is perfect, I know I'm in the right place at the right time.
I feel joy.
This short prologue brings me to my quest: I am ever so slowly questing towards finding and creating perfect, bakery style cookies. This quest involves the ever favorite chocolate chip cookie because we all know that's the staple of any bakery (and every child's favorite.) However, my quest also involves taking some of those famous packaged cookies that we love and turning them into delicious homemade creations. Such as those super soft sugar cookies with the melt-in-your-mouth icing mounded on top. And those black-and-white sandwich cookies with the creamy middle that are always better dipped in a big glass of milk.
So that's where I was this weekend. Up to my ears in crumbly, fudgey, chocolaty cookies and delicious cream cheese icing.
What can I say? I prefer my homemade oreos to have more than one bite.
This is only one version of my homemade oreos, though. Some people, such as my husband, like to call these ones Whoopie Pies; however, a cookie connoisseur like myself knows that Whoopie Pie cookies are more cake-like in cookie consistency and not so crispy and fudgey like this oreo version.
I guess you can call these an in-between cookie: not quite whoopie but not quite your average, crunchy oreo.
But let me tell you, you'll still want the big glass of milk and you'll definitely say whoopie! after you eat one.
Because as always, these are homemade.
Sweet, with more love than you can taste.
