Oatmeal Creme Pies
My mom made killer brown bag lunches when I was growing up which included grape jelly and smooth peanut butter sandwiches on white bread that got squished under my juice box so much that the jelly seeped through the Wonder Bread and, looking back, that's basically like eating a pastry for lunch, but my mom knew I liked PBJ so she offset the sugar with celery sticks and baby carrots.
Some days, though, my mom would pack a turkey sandwich and since she's got a serious sweet tooth, she knew that she'd need to supplement that change with some serious desserts. We might have some homemade brownies that she'd wrap up in foil, but usually she'd give me and Candice some incredible Entenmann's or Little Debbie goodies. My faaaavorite (aside from the Entenmann's raspberry danish which lives on a pedestal with Michael Fassbender and movie theaters where you can order cocktails) were the Oatmeal Creme Pies.
Soft, chewy, and filled with frosting that definitely had like beaucoup trans fats, but it was the 90s haay! So good. So I recreated them this weekend with Candice since I had lots of oatmeal to play with thanks to my pals at Bob's Red Mill. 10/10 will pack them for lunch tomorrow.
Oatmeal Creme Pies
- 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 3 cups Bob's Red Mill original instant oatmeal
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
- 1 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar, NOT sifted
Cooking Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Using an electric stand or hand mixer, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time and beat mixture until combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add half of dry ingredients to butter and sugar. Beat a few strokes until just combined. Add in remaining dry ingredients and again, beat until just combined. Fold in oats using a rubber spatula until fully incorporated into cookie batter.
- Portion out balls of cookie dough using a spoon or, better yet, a small (1.5 Tbsp) ice cream scoop so that they're all roughly the same size (important for sandwich cookies!). Space balls of dough a few inches apart from one another--they'll spread, but don't press them into disks so that you have a chewier middle.
- Bake cookies for 15 minutes. Let cool slightly and then transfer to wire rack to cool fully.
- Once cookies are fully cool, make creme filling. Using the whisk attachment, beat butter and shortening until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add in confectioner's sugar and beat to combine (start on a low speed to prevent sugar from flying everywhere).
- Next, match each cookie with one of a similar size. Add frosting into a piping bag and then squeeze about 1.5 Tablespoons of creme into the center of one cookie. Then, squish two cookies together until creme spreads to outside edges of the sandwich. Because there's shortening in the frosting, cookies will remain stable at room temperature for about 5 days.
Disclaimer: I was tweeting about how much I love Bob's Red Mill and then they sent me a ton of their new instant oatmeal to try. I absolutely love their products and buy them all the time, but I did receive some free product that I used to make this recipe.