Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary

a food & travel blog

Oreo Button Cookies

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oreo buttons 2
This idea has been filed away in my head for several months now. I’ve been wanting to make home made Oreo cookies for some time and I bookmarked a few recipes which looked interesting and had some really positive comments. When my daughter said she’d like a Coraline themed birthday party this year I thought this would be a great time to try out the cookies and cut them into giant button shapes to go with the theme.

The original recipe is found over at Bakerella, a republished recipe from the Flour recipe book, but I adapted it slightly by using very dark chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate chips; 85% cocoa solids dark chocolate, to be precise, because I wanted that bitter dark chocolate flavour in the biscuit. I’m a big fan of dark chocolate! As such I need to add more flour to compensate as the mixture was very thin otherwise. The filling was changed slightly too by replacing some of the butter with vegetable shortening, as I saw in Smitten Kitchen’s recipe as I thought this would make a whiter icing with more of a shop bought flavour to it.
Bakerella recommends rolling the dough into a log shape, chilling, and slicing. I did this, but I found the mixture far too hard and crumbly. Then again, I did leave the dough overnight in the fridge to chill instead of her recommended two hours. I was getting frustrated with how difficult the dough was to work while cold and I was lamenting the waste of 200 grams of lovely dark chocolate in a failed recipe. Then I realised the dough scraps I’d left from the biscuits which had crumbled to bits while I was trying to shape them were soft and made a perfect pliable smooth dough for rolling and cutting.
button cookies

So I did just that! I left the rest of the dough to warm to room temperature and rolled it out to a 1/4 inch thickness before cutting into circles and making the button shapes with a glass edge and straw. This made for a much nicer round button shape and it was substantially easier to form the button embellishments. While removing the button holes bits of dough get stuck in the straw. Just snip the straw shorter and shorter as it fills up.

This recipe is not exactly like shop bought Oreos with their crumbly crunch, but they are a very reasonable home made alternative. The chocolate flavour is fantastic and I really like the texture of the cookie. The creamy filling compliments it perfectly. You really do want to sit with a great big glass of  ice cold milk while eating these gorgeous dark chocolate cookies.

coraline cake 2

I was unable, due to time constraints, to have these cookies ready for my daughter’s birthday party. I wanted to have one cookie on each child’s plate as a sort of birthday party starter but I was rushed enough as it was trying to get the cake and doll finished in time in between baking for and blogging about The Shetland Food Fair that it never happened.

Better late than never though and I’m glad I made the biscuits a few days later and finally got the idea out of my head. My family love these cookies and I thought I’d share the recipe with you just in case you might like to include them in a Coraline or even a sewing themed party. You can chill the filled biscuits before serving so that the filling is hard, just like the shop bought version.

You might also be interested in the Coraline Birthday cake and 14″ fabric Coraline doll pattern complete with little yellow rain jacket and wellies I designed and made for my daughters birthday gift. The end of this month sees my second blogaversary so as a gift for all my readers I am sharing this pattern for free! Please do share it with all your sewing friends! 🙂

oreo buttons 1
Oreo Button Cookies
A not-too-shabby home made Oreo cookie recipe. No preservatives, massive chocolate! Perfect for a Coraline-themed party.
Ingredients
For the Cookies
    • 228 grams unsalted butter
    • 150 grams caster sugar
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 200 grams Fair trade dark chocolate >85% cocoa solids
    • 90 grams Fair trade cocoa powder
    • 250 grams plain flour
    • 1 tsp salt
    • 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
For the Filling
  • 50 grams unsalted butter
  • 65 grams vegetable shortening
  • 230 grams icing sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • pinch salt
Instructions
1. Gently melt butter over a low heat in a small saucepan.
2. Whisk together butter and caster sugar in a medium sized bowl.
3. Break chocolate into small pieces and gently melt in a heatproof bowl suspended over a pan of barely simmering water.
4. Whisk vanilla and melted chocolate into the butter/sugar mixture.
5. Whisk in the egg until well combined.
6. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, salt and bicarbonate of soda and stir into the chocolate mixture until well combined.
7. Cover and refrigerate for two hours, or overnight to firm up.
8. Bring dough to room temperature.
9. Preheat oven to 160 C
10. Cut dough into quarters and roll each quarter to a 1/4 inch thickness.
11. Using a 2.5 inch circle cookie cutter cut out shapes and place onto a piece of baking paper on a baking tray.
12. Using a glass with a diameter 1/2 inch smaller than the cookie cutter, press a small circle onto the cut cookie dough.
13. Using a drinking straw, cut four button holes out of the centre of the cookie.
14. Chill cookies in the refrigerator for 10 minutes before baking for 20 minutes.. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before icing and assembling.
16. To make the filling combine the butter, vegetable shortening, icing sugar, vanilla and milk in a food processor and process until light and creamy.
17. Place 1 tbsp of filling onto the bottom of one cookie and sandwich together with another cookie. Press gently in the centre so that some of the filling shows through the button holes.
18. Repeat with the remaining cookies. Cookies can be refrigerated to harden the filling, if desired.
Details

Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 18 x 2.5 inch cookies

This recipe fits into the theme of a few food blog challenges this month including:

1. Alphabakes, a challenge alternately hosted by Caroline over at Caroline Makes… and Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker. For this challenge we are given a letter each month and we are asked to share our recipes using ingredients or with a title starting with this particular letter. This month Caroline has given us the letter ‘O’.

2. We Should Cocoa is a gorgeous chocolaty challenge by Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog. This month the challenge is hosted by Rebecca over at BakenQuilt and she has asked us to share our chocolate cookie recipes.

3. The Biscuit Barrel, by Laura at I’d Much Rather Bake Than is a monthly blogging challenge which asks us to share our biscuit and cookie recipes. This month the theme is festive and party.

4. Made With Love Mondays, a from scratch recipe round-up by Mark over at Javelin Warrior where folk all around the world share their from-scratch recipes.

Made with Love Mondays, hosted by Javelin Warrior

5. Recipe of the Week over at A Mummy Too!

Link up your recipe of the week

Comments

  1. Oh those do look fun. I’m sure I remember, in my dark, distant past, being told not to play with my food – tosh!

    Reply

  6. I adore these, and we are big Coraline fans, which makes these doubly wonderful in my book.

    Thanks very much for linking this up with #recipeoftheweek. I’ve Pinned and Stumbled this post and there’s a fresh linky just gone live, featuring these! 🙂

    Reply

    • Yay! Thank you ever so much Emily 🙂 We’re Coraline fans too. However, I only just read the book for the first time last night – what a fantastic story! I love the way Neil Gaiman thinks 🙂

      Reply

  7. These look fantastic, Elizabeth, and I love the contrast between the intense dark chocolate and the sweet frosting. And I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t need to wait for a party to enjoy these treats 🙂

    Reply

    • My pleasure Rebecca, thank you for hosting and for your lovely comment 🙂 Let me know how you get on with the cookies!

      Reply

  13. Oh I love these and even more so because you haven’t taken the easy route and used a biscuit mould. Great idea.

    Reply

    • Thanks Angela! I had no idea there was a biscuit mould for such things – that would certainly speed things up! 🙂

      Reply

  14. Elizabeth, I am in love with your chocolate buttons. Oreos are all well and good, but these win hands down. I have a friends birthday to bake for soon and would love to do something similar. Not sure I’ll have the time, but I will if I can. Failing that, they’d make fab Christmas gifts.

    Reply

    • They do take a little while to make what with all the chilling and 20 minutes a batch (about 8 halves – four cookies in total) per tray means it does take awhile. I hope you get the chance to make them though. Alternatively, the button technique could be used on smaller shortbread cookies. 🙂 Thank you for your lovely comment!

      Reply

  15. your biscuits look gorgeous – I made oreos recently and just used cocoa but the idea of using dark chocolate as well sounds even better – glad you made them – maybe another opportunity will come up to present them at a party – I hope so as they are so adorable. And your Coraline doll and cake look wonderful – I haven’t heard of the movie but I love neil gaiman and will check it out and then look more at the cake and doll.

    Reply

  16. Yet another amazing idea and gorgeously photographed. Thank you so much for sharing them witht the Biscuit Barrel challenge!

    Reply

  17. These look wonderful!
    I had no idea who Coraline was and had to look it up. Now I understand!
    The cookies are a great idea and I can see hoe the button pattern would work with other biscuits. Thanks for the recipe.

    Reply

    • It’s such a fantastic animation – I highly recommend you watch it! I have used this button pattern with shortbread cookies before. They’re quite effective. 🙂

      Reply

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