Chocolate Chip Cookies Stuffed With Oreos Exist!

A week ago I got an email from an old friend who is currently living in San Fransisco with a recipe she suggested I blog about.  I clicked into the link and could not believe what I was seeing - an actual chocolate chip cookie that was stuffed with an Oreo!  Who thinks of that type of amazing craziness?  I will tell you: the lovely Jenny from Picky Palate.  Being relatively new to the food blogger world, I only recently stumbled upon this site, but I have been hooked since.  She has so many great ideas, from the simple to more the difficult, that will work for any and all occasions.

Knowing this past weekend was going to be a bit busy, I was totally looking forward to a relaxing Friday night watching TV and making the most ridiculous cookies to date!

Chocolate Chip Cookies Stuffed with Oreos and Heath Bars adapted from Picky Palate:

YUM!

The first step in this cookie making process was the actual chocolate chip cookie dough.  Needless to say, I was going to need a lot of it considering I was going to have to cover a lot of Oreos and Heath Bars!  That, and I told a few people what I was making, so they of course wanted to try.  So, I took out my trusty Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips and TRIPLED their chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back!

The Necessities...

• 6 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• 3 cup(s) butter or margarine, softened
• 2-1/4 cup(s) sugar
• 2-1/4 cup(s) brown sugar, packed
• 6 large eggs
• 6 teaspoon(s) vanilla
• 6 3/4 cup(s) unsifted flour
• 3 teaspoon(s) baking soda
• 1-1/2 teaspoon(s) salt

First I combined the massive amount of flour, salt and baking soda in a large mixing bowl and set it aside for later.

Then I put my new side-kick, the Kitchen Aid Mixer, to use and tested its limits beyond the butter cookies.  Other than when making those butter cookies, my mother was a big believer in using shortening (Crisco) in cookie recipes rather than butter, and since she was my teacher in all things baking, I still follow the same rules.  In general, about 1 cup of Crisco equals 1 cup of butter, or two sticks.  However, I bought the ingredients before deciding that tripling the recipe was necessary and got a smaller can of Crisco which, come to find out, only has 2-1/2 cups in it!  Therefore, I added 2-1/2 cups Crisco and 1 stick of butter to the mixing bowl as well as the sugar and brown sugars and started to mix everything together at a slow speed.

Shortening/Butter and Sugars

As if that was not enough of a work out for the Kitchen Aid mixer, I then added the vanilla and 6 eggs (1 at a time) to the bowl while it was slowing mixing the ingredients together.  As you can see, I was using the whisk attachment but probably should have used the paddle!  I mixed everything together until it got creamy, which happened pretty quickly, and the batter was very light and fluffy.  However, there was quite a bit of effort used by the machine to combine it all!

Creamy wet ingredients

As the photo shows, I filled the mixing bowl before I had added ANY of the dry ingredients, so I moved the batter to one the biggest bowls I owned for the next step.

Awaiting the dry ingredients

Slowly I added the dry ingredients to the large glass bowl and mixed them into the creamy batter using a wooden spoon - the only utensil that seemed to work (and trust me, I tried a few).

Mixing together...

Having been spoiled by the Kitchen Aid Mixed and still not owning an electric hand mixture, getting the dry and wet ingredients fully mixed together definitely took some elbow grease - remember how I thought tripling the recipe was a good idea!?!

Mixed!

Finally I added 3 bags of the chocolate chips to the dough, one bag at a time, and tried to make sure that all the of chips were fully incorporated evenly throughout the cookie dough.  Given the situation, I thought I did pretty well!

Ready for stuffing

Now it was time to break out the goodies for stuffing!  Deciding to really go for it, I stuffed about half of the cookies with Oreos and the other half with miniature Heath bars as they are one of Nick's favorite candies.

"Stuffing"

The stuffing process was actually pretty simple since I used an ice cream scooper. I scooped up the cookie dough and put it on one side of the Oreo:

Oreo + 1 Chocolate Chip Cookie

and then took another ball of dough and placed it on the other side of the Oreo.

Oreo + 2 Chocolate Chip Cookies

Then, just using my fingers, I flattened out the dough balls, sealed in the Oreo, and placed the cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet. 

Oreo + 2 Chocolate Chip Cookies = 1 BIG cookie!

These cookies were HUGE - almost the size of a baseball!  Normally I would put three cookies across the baking sheet, but here I only put two since I wasn't sure how much they would actually expand when baking! 

Next, after unwrapping a bunch of  the heath bars, I repeated the same assembly steps as I used for the Oreos.

Miniature Heath Bars

Another shot of me assembling the cookies:

1 Heath Bar + 2 Chocolate Chip Cookies = Another BIG Cookie

I baked the cookies in a 375 degree over for almost 13 minutes.  The recommended time was between 9-11, but these were just so big!  So, at about 13 minutes, the cookies were a bit golden brown on top, which worked for me.

Cooling...

These cookies were massive, especially the ones with the Oreos in them.  While the heath bars were good and added a little something extra, the Oreo really was decedent.  People's eyes turned into saucers when they first heard about them, only to be left a bit speechless when they actually saw them in person.  Really, these are the size of three cookies in one.  I am a girl who loves her cookies and usually has to exercise all sorts of will power not to put her hand back in the cookie jar, but after having one you are truly full. 

You can substitute the Oreo or heath bar for any of your favorite cookies or candy bar, and Picky Palate actually offers up some variations with Snickers, Kit-Kats and Peanut Butter Cups.  Really though, the Oreo adds a lot of taste and a great element of surprise to the lucky recipients.  I would highly recommend these cookies for a special occasion because, while being very impressive, they are surprisingly easy to make!  You just need to make sure you have enough dough to make enough for the final product.  I did go a bit overboard with tripling the recipe, and I think doubling it would have been just fine, but now I have plenty of leftovers to take to a couple of different crowds!