Homemade Oreos

Swept up by seasonal cookie mania, I spent half of yesterday cycling my oven through cookie sheets containing dozens and dozens of them — not gingerbread, or peppermint chip, but Oreos. The store-bought version is and probably always will be my favorite cookie, but I had a feeling it could only benefit from a homemade iteration. (I had a similar stroke of inspiration a few years ago with a wildly successful kluged-together version of DIY Nutter-Butters.) For my Oreos I used Sassy Radish's take on Smitten Kitchen's take on the version in the cookbook_Retro Desserts; despite my initial recoil at the use of vegetable shortening in the creamy filling, the cookies were flawless, especially dunked in a glass of milk. Not just as good as childhood, they were better._ —Helen Rosner