Home-made Oreos, Take 1

Today I decided to make homemade Oreos. There are tons of Oreo recipes on the internet and my husband is kind of an Oreo addict. After looking at a LOT of recipes I noticed that there are basically two recipes that have been tweaked a bit in a thousand different ways. For the cookie, there are recipes that use devil's food cake mix and recipes that use dutch process cocoa. The ones that use dutch process cocoa tend to have more ingredients and form a dough that you roll out and cut with a cookie cutter. The ones that use cake mix form a dough that you roll into balls and plop on the cookie sheet. They end up looking more like whoopie pies than Oreos, but I chose to start with them anyway. I've never bought dutch process cocoa before and my baking cabinets are already overflowing with the junk food ingredients I do keep on hand. Plus, they were easy and I already had all of the ingredients. If you keep cake mixes on hand like I do, you probably have all the ingredients too. Ready?

1 box devil's food cake mix
2 eggs
3/4 C shortening

That's it. Mix together until smooth. Roll into 1" balls. The recipe I used did not say to flatten the balls, but you really should. Then bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on baking sheet.

This is how the cookies turn out if you flatten them halfway.

Left pic: The left 6 cookies I flattened to about 3/16" before baking. The 6 on the right I didn't flatten at all.
Right pic: Finished "Oreo" made from the flattened cookies.

These cookies look nothing like Oreos and don't have the same crunchy texture either. They are very yummy and ridiculously easy though, so I will probably make them again. Now, for the filling:

Again, there are basically two filling recipes, and  again I chose the easier one that I didn't have to buy ingredients for. The filling I used is basically buttercream frosting. I'd give you the recipe, but frankly, it was a flop. I didn't use as much condensed milk as the recipe called for and I still needed to add a cup and a half more powdered sugar to keep it from being soup, so just use your favorite buttercream frosting recipe (or look one up) and you'll probably end up with about the same cookies I have. They are awesome. And simple. They are not Oreos. My husband may like them, but he will still make me buy Oreos. So once this batch has been eaten, I will buy dutch process cocoa and the ingredients for the other type of filling and we will try Home-made Oreos, Take 2.

Update: I ended up making them open-faced since they were so thick. I was worried that they would not be stackable, but after a few hours of letting the frosting harden, they did just fine. When my husband tried them, he said they tasted exactly like Oreo Cakesters. I think they are close, but better.