Homemade Peanut Butter Oreos

Hooray for more peanut butter and chocolate! It's probably my favorite dessert combo. After making the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Stuffed Oreos last week I knew I needed more of it. I figured I would try my hand at reproducing the Peanut Butter Oreos themselves. 

First I made some chocolate sugar cookies. I made the dough, rolled it out in between two pieces of parchment and refrigerated it half an hour. After it was chilled, I cut out the cookies into 1.5 inch circles. Then I refrigerated the cut out cookie dough for 15 to 30 minutes. I found that the longer I refrigerated the cookies, the firmer and slightly crispier they turned out. So it's to taste. If you want firmer cookies with less cracks, refrigerate them longer. 

While they were baking, I made the filling. This is actually the same filling I used for the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Stuffed Oreos from last week but without the Reese's Minis. Once the cookies were out of the oven and cooled, I piped out the filling and sandwiched the cookies together.  You can see that these are the cookies that I refrigerated for 15 minutes, while the cookies below are the ones that were chilled for 30 minutes. These were slightly softer and you can see, they have more cracks than the others. 

HOMEMADE OREO COOKIE INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
milk

PEANUT BUTTER FILLING INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup peanut butter
1.5 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-3 tbs milk

HOMEMADE OREO COOKIE INSTRUCTIONS
In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together butter and sugar until just incorporated. In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg, vanilla and espresso powder together. Add to butter-sugar mixture. Mix again on low speed, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl intermittently as needed.

In medium bowl, whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and baking powder together. Add to wet ingredients. Mix on low speed until a dough is formed and there are no longer any streaks of butter in the mixing bowl. The dough will often clump around the paddle attachment while being mixed. This is normal and a good sign that your dough is the right consistency.  If your mixture does not come together and is crumbly, add milk 1 tbs at a time until the dough clumps.

Roll out dough between two pieces of parchment until about 1/8" to 1/4" thickness. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes. Take off top parchment paper and using 1.5" round cookie cutter, cut out your cookies. Place on baking sheet lined with silicone mat or parchment paper. Refrigerate again for 15 or 30 minutes. 15 minutes will give you softer cookies with more cracks, 30 minutes will give you firmer cookies will less to no cracks.

Bake for 8-12 minutes. You want to make sure you don't ever bake, so they're not too crispy. Cool on cooling rack. Once completely cool, pipe or use a small spatula to cover half the cookies with filling (recipe below). Sandwich together with other half of cookies.

PEANUT BUTTER FILLING INSTRUCTIONS
In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together butter and peanut butter. Once incorporated add in powdered sugar. It will be thick. Add in vanilla and 1 tablespoon milk. Mix, if still too thick, add in more milk, little by little. If you make it too thin, you can always add more powdered sugar.