made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

This is one of my go-to kid-friendly treats for holidays.  They are definately appropriate for any day, but I love that you can customize the filling colour to fit with a holiday (ie. pink for Valentine's day, red and green for Christmas, etc).  Today I did orange for Halloween.  The fact that they are easy to transport to school functions is a plus as well!

In my opinion, these are better than the "real thing," because well, they are the real thing!  Here is the recipe!

made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

For the chocolate cookies:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature, unsalted butter
2 large eggs

For the filling:
1 cup unsalted butter
3-4 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tsp heavy cream
desired food colouring or gel dye

Method
1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While on low speed, add the butter, and then the eggs. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart.  Bake for about 9 minutes, until cookies look a little crackly on the top
4. To make the filling, place butter in mixing bowl and at low speed, gradually beat in the icing sugar one cup at a time.  Add a little cream and vanilla.  Add more cream or icing sugar if necessary to achieve desired consistency.  Whip at med-high speed until icing is nice and fluffy. (Optional: Blend in a tiny bit of gel dye until you reach the desired color.)
6. To assemble the cookies, put some icing in a freezer bag and snip off a corner.  Pipe tablespoon-size blobs of cicing into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the icing. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with icing.