Pimp My Snack – Oreo Cookie Cake

I love Oreos. They are amazing. The best biscuit around I reckon, even better than a caramel chocolate digestive, and they’re pretty good! In America, where they are the country’s number one selling biscuit, you can get all kinds of flavours, and of course Double Stuff ones too. They are the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea or glass of milk, bowl of ice cream, and in fact anything!

A good friend of mine bought me these cookie shaped cake pans that are basically big Oreos. I am ashamed to say it has taken me nearly 18 months to actually use them – but when LincsGeek said he wanted me to bake him a birthday cake naturally they were the first thing I thought of and I started to search for a recipe.

I found this Ode to Oreo Cookie Cake on the Party Bluprints website that looked exactly as if it had been baked inside my silicone cake pans. Being an American recipe the first thing I had to do was translate all the cups and tablespoons into measurements I understood (thanks Google!) – I have no idea how you can measure blocks of butter in tablespoons and I struggled to find a definitive answer as to what a “stick” of butter is, but never mind! I actually have a half-cup measure that I was able to make use of so it was only some things that needed translating into English before I began baking.

Strangely enough the recipe doesn’t need any Oreos – but I can tell you now that it tastes just like one! So keep reading!

I’ve never been a decent baker; I find it quite difficult to get the texture of my cakes right once baked. Baking is quite precise, so I blame my more creative mind and lack of scientific ability. Thankfully this was a very easy cake to bake and the instructions over on Party Bluprints were nice and simple to follow (naturally I’m not going to reproduce the recipe here as it is very easy to go and read it for yourselves!).

The cake batter requires three bowls. The first you use over hot water to melt the chocolate and add butter to create a nice shiny chocolatey buttery mixture. The second is for the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. And in the final bowl you beat together the sugar, eggs and vanilla. You then combine all three to make the cake batter, which is a thick batter that requires spooning into the well buttered and dusted cake pans. The two cookie-shaped cakes then take just over half an hour in the oven.

The buttercream filling is a bit of a different mixture then I’m used to – I usually just use butter and icing sugar, but this time it’s butter, icing sugar, vanilla and milk. I started by using my electric whisk to combine all the ingredients, but like the cake batter this is a very thick mixture and it struggled so I resorted to a wooden spoon and did it by hand! Actually it didn’t take very long to bring everything together and make the mixture nice and fluffy, and a quick naughty taste confirmed it was very very good and tasted exactly like the centre of an Oreo cookie!

The cake, once complete, really looks the part, don’t you think? The two cake layers are rather brownie like, with the buttercream offering moisture. Believe me when I say you only need a teeny slither, it’s incredibly sweet, but it tastes amazing! I have to say I am rather proud of it – quite possibly the best cake I’ve ever baked, and maybe even the best cake I’ve ever tasted!!