Oreo Olallieberry Chocolate Layer Cake, or "Oo-- cake!"

I'm working on developing an Easter recipe for y'alls right now, but it isn't quite up to snuff yet, so in the meantime, here's the cake that I made for my roommate's birthday party this past weekend, at which our epic and famous pie made an encore appearance.  Maria has been after me for quite some time now to use up the fat bag of olallieberries I have stashed in the freezer to free up freezer space, so I decided to make her an oreo olallieberry chocolate layer cake for her birthday -- oreos because they're nostalgic, and birthday cakes should be nostalgic; olallieberries because then our freezer space increases and because they're delicious, especially when combined with dark chocolate; and chocolate because... wait, do I really need to explain myself with that one?

The cake itself is fluffy black chocolate cake layered with cocoa-olallieberry Italian meringue buttercream, studded with oreo cookie chunks, and covered in drippy dark chocolate ganache. Between the tartness of the berries and the dark cocoa, the cake is only moderately sweet, just the way I like it: dark, not cloyingly saccharine, with a moody attitude.  Oh, and gold flecks on top just for a bit of diva power.  What the heck, right?--I was making a layer cake already.  Might as well go all out!

With the bit of buttercream and cake that I had left over after I finished making the actual cake itself, here's what I did: cake shots!  Layers of cake and buttercream, topped off with sprinkles, in a convenient shot glass.  The perfect amount of single-serving, I'm-craving-cake-in-the-middle-of-the-night delicious-ness.  Forget cake pops, which require painstaking shaping, freezing, and dipping.  I'll take a cake shot (or two, or three), please!  :-)

Now back to the kitchen to work out this Easter recipe!


Read on for recipe....

Nostalgia in cookie form: Oreos

It's the continuation of sandwich cookies!  :-)

Rosemary-lemon sandwich cookies

Classic chocolate-vanilla oreos

So the other type of sandwich cookie that I made for Ting's birthday package (read about it here!) were good ol' chocolate vanilla oreos.  I figured that these would provide a homey and comforting contrast to the more "out-there" rosemary and lemon cookies that I was including in the box.

Ah--and many of you are probably wondering: why in the world are these cookies purple?  Well, purple is Ting's favorite color, so I had to incorporate it somehow.  :-)

All Gone!

Read on for recipe...

Oreos grow up: rosemary lemon sandwich cookies

As I mentioned sometime last week, I've been a little obsessed with sandwich cookies.  It all started when I sat down to try to think of what to get my cousin for her late October birthday.  Of course, the natural answer was desserts!  This was all well and good, except for one giant hitch: Ting lives in New York City.  That's ..., well, over 2500 miles away from me.  Hm.  But, enter in the modern miracle that is 2nd day mail!  (I <3 USPS.)

So my thoughts turned to what kinds of desserts would travel best.  Ice cream was obviously--though quite unfortunately because Ting loves froyo--out.  As was cake, since I wouldn't want to send anything unfrosted and DIY unfinished.  That left breads and cookies.  I decided that while breads would be a great care-package type item, they weren't really all that festive and therefore were inappropriate for a birthday, so cookies it was.  Then, I knew it had to be some form of more robust cookies, since I didn't want the treats to end up arriving in New York as a big package of crumbs.  That would be a huge waste of postage.  And, I don't know how it hit me but suddenly... *sandwich cookies!*  They would travel perfectly, and I could make two different flavors to send for variety.  :-D

Rosemary-lemon sandwich cookies

Chocolate-vanilla "oreo" sandwich cookies

So, Ting's birthday package ended up with two kinds of "oreos": rosemary-lemon and good old nostalgic chocolate-vanilla.--both recipes that I'll be posting this week, starting with the rosemary-lemon ones today.

 

The rosemary-lemon sandwich cookies were definitely the more "grown-up" flavor out of the two, but they were a great complement to the traditional oreos.  The rosemary in the cookies isn't overpowering, and, together with the lemon, lends a subtle excellent fragrance to the overall cookie.   I thought the combination might be a little too exotic, but when I took both types with me to the office after I'd made them, the rosemary-lemon were definitely the more popular of the two (probably also thanks to that exoticism--everyone wanted to try them)!

I heard from Ting a few days after I sent the cookies telling me that they arrived completely intact and were still delicious, even after having survived a couple-thousand mile journey across the country.  :-D  Hope you had a very happy (and yummy!) birthday, Ting!

Make sure to tune in later this week for the traditional chocolate-vanilla oreo recipe.

Read on for recipe...

Hallo-week: Seasalt cacao nib oreos with meyer lemon caramel filling

Here's a bit of a tricky treat for y'all: a cookie that's sweet but salty.

I've been a bit obsessed with making sandwich cookies lately--don't ask me why because I have NO idea, so I couldn't get this idea out of my head for my Halloween party.  Originally, I'd wanted to make pumpkin oreos, but when I realized that I had too many pumpkin-flavored treats on my list of desserts to make, I had to rack my brain for a different flavor of oreo, and these sweet-but-salty cookies came about.

Seasalt and cacao nib oreos

with meyer lemon caramel filling

They are quite a mind trip but soooo good at the same time!  When you first bite into these, you taste the sweetness of the filling and the caramel but then the sea salt hits and the overall impression that you're left with is that you just ate a yummy but salty cookie.  Bizarre!  I also have to warn you that you'll really want to eat this cookie dough because it's nice and chocolate-y and not sweet at all, so I found myself popping cookie dough in my mouth whenever I had a chance.  Oops.  *innocent look*  I can't wait to serve these at the Halloween party and to see the look on people's faces when they expect a sweet cookie but get hit with savory instead!

Read on for the recipe...