Got Oreos?

(so, is a picture worth 1000 words? Maybe a few hundred anyway, sorry for the late post.)

Got Milk? 'Cause if you've got Oreos, then you most definitely need milk.  Some things are just better together, 'like peas & carrots' as Forest Gump would say - although I prefer the chocolate and peanut butter combination myself. 

I guess when you've been around the kitchen awhile, you acquire things. Some very useful things - things like a KitchenAide mixer and Silpat baking sheets; some very 'gadget-y' things - like the 'hand carved' wooden rack puller from the Maine State Prison store (don't ask); some very valuable things - like antique McCoy Cookie Jars; some very apropos things - like cookie & milk emblazoned cups and plates; some very sentimental things - like Milk Bottles from Lockport's original Castles Dairy and some far off namesake 'Hoffman's' Dairy; and some very thoughtful things - like a Milk Truck Oreo Cookie Jar.  So when you've been baking cookies for awhile, it's only a matter of time before you find the perfect occasion to pull them all together and put all those 'things' to good use.

When I ran across the recipe for Homemade Oreos on one of my favorite food blogs, the Smitten Kitchen, I knew immediately that I'd be baking them. It was obvious given their iconic value, not to mention all the great 'props' I have to go along with them - it was inevitable.

And there you have it, the 'proclamation' that MILK is 'Nature's Most Nearly Perfect Food,' which is as good as you can get because the Oreo Cookie (in a photo finish with Chocolate Chip) IS Nature's Perfect Food!

Just a few notes on the cookies: I also made a light biscotti this week, Orange Chocolate, a variation of the Lemon and White Chocolate in Week 7, for the non-Oreo lover, as I'm sure there are one or two of those in the world! As for the Oreos, I thought the taste of the wafers was dead on. If you review the recipe,(with pictures FAR superior to mine) the only changes I made was using regular Hershey's Cocoa because that's what I had enough of.  For the filling, I did two things to improve the nutritional value (if there is such a thing for an Oreo! :) . First I reduced the fat in the filling by nearly half, by simply cutting back on both the butter and shortening and replacing it with a little milk until I got the right consistancy.  Which was the biggest change in the cookie, all that fat is intended to make the filling very firm, with the milk swap it was much softer, but still tasted good.  And the other big improvement is that I invested in the Organic, Non Hydrogenated, No Transfat Shortening.  Some of the recipes I've run across still use shortening, and while I know cookies by nature are indulgent, this wasn't something I wanted to continue to use, so from here on out, it's No Trans Fat for the Cookie Project ... But being true to Julia Child, there will always be butter!