Happy Birthday, Oreo!

My first crack at baking since we moved from Bellingham to Portland about two weeks ago. I had to work downtown for about a week, and on one of my breaks I wandered over to Sur La Table. (Poor me, right?) I'd already planned on making the cupcakes -- but I wanted a coordinating liner, and I knew I'd be able to find something there.

Five days later I walked into The Decorette Shop and found an entire WALL of cupcake liners.

Since I'd already gotten some nice ones at Sur La Table, I just rejoiced in the fact that this supply is only eight wonderful, walkable blocks from my new home.

The first step was separating 26 cookies. I twisted a few, but Oreos aren't in my Top 5 Cookies list, and I didn't have the finesse necessary to prevent a cracked top. So I got out the paring knife for the rest of them. Broke a few tops in two, but kept all the pieces, figuring I'd handle them carefully and piece them back together, or just get lazy and stick shards of them in the top of the icing.

I quartered 20 more cookies and folded them into the batter.

I wanted a more uniform frosting application, so I had to dig around in the garage for one of the several "CAKE STUFF" boxes. As I was contemplating piecing the Oreo tops to make wholes, or just going the lazy, shard route, Eric walked by, saw all the pieces all over, and said "Ooooh, a puzzle!" Bonus.

I piped pretty cream cheese frosting rosettes on them (only to smash them with the oreo tops), and sent them on their way.

The box I got at The Decorette Shop was a tad too small for the 26 I made, so darn, I had to keep six.


I have Pinterest to thank for the desire to make these. The recipe is here.

Oh yeah -- I did in fact buy a box of Birthday Cake Oreos. I love cake, we know that. I'm not a huge fan of Oreos, we've established that too. They were okay. I used about 10 of them in this recipe because the bag of Double-Stuff Oreos had only 20. I don't think they affected the taste of the cupcakes that much, but on their own, they were just mediocre. A little too artificial tasting for me. I found a more detailed review here, if you're curious.