One of my favorite cookies, Oreos are pure nostalgia for me. One of my early childhood memories was shortly after landing in Taipei, jetlagged, and eating Oreos with Taiwanese milk in our apartment in Linkou. I’m not sure if everyone knows this, but Oreos are actually vegan! I got my start in baking with vegan cupcakes, so vegan cooking was always something I was comfortable with. Even then, I still have semi-traumatic memories of my 10th grade English class for our St. Patrick’s Day party, when I brought vegan cupcakes in, but literally nobody wanted to eat them because they were vegan, and instead preferred the storebought ones with the artificial spray can frosting instead. Yes, it was a core memory, but because of how shitty I felt in that moment. But I will say, it spurred me to really focus on becoming a better baker, and sometimes a good motivator is spite. Not always, but in the case of me using that awful experience to propel my pastry skills to where they are now, I would say that it was a great wake-up call. Long trauma dump aside, I love vegan baking, through thick and thin, and I stand behind it. This is reinforced by the fact that Oreos are vegan, and they taste delicious. So to my 10th grade vegan food-hating English class, these Oreos are for you.

The recipe, as that entire anecdote implies, is 100% vegan. I used Earth Balance nonhydrogenated vegan margarine in lieu of butter, but you can also use vegan vegetable shortening as well! Oreos have their characteristic dark hue from black cacao powder, which is an alkalized/Dutch-processed cocoa that has fruitier notes to it. I loved using black cacao powder during my time at Milkbar for that reason, and it just made me love Oreos more when I found out that black cacao was the secret ingredient to those cookies achieving that color. I also used creme di cacao, or chocolate liquor, in my cookie dough, but you can sub that out with plant based milk if need be. I actually portioned out my cookies using a mooncake press, since it saves me time in having to roll and cut out the dough, since instead of doing that plus pulling and rerolling the dough scraps, I just press individual dough balls into flat cookies instead! You can still roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness and cut out 1.5-inch rounds, but the mooncake press also creates these cool patterns on each cookie. The filling is essentially a vegan peanut butter buttercream, that I then piped into each cookie sandwich. I love peanut butter and Oreos, so combining those together was just a no-brainer.

Makes 32 cookie sandwiches:
For the chocolate dough:
1 stick nonhydrogenated vegan margarine or vegetable shortening
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp creme di cacao
a pinch of salt
3/4 cups + 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp black cacao powder

In a bowl, whip the margarine/shortening, sugar, and creme di cacao until combined. Fold into that the other ingredients to form a dough. Refrigerate the dough for 10-20 minutes.

Portion out the dough into 10g-balls and roll each in more all-purpose flour, and arrange them to be 2 inches apart two lined sheet trays. Using a mooncake press(not a paddle), press the balls out into 1.5-inch rounds. Bake the cookies at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes.

For the filling:
4 tbsp nonhydrogenated vegan margarine or vegetable shortening
2 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
4 tbsp peanut butter
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl, whip everything together until combined. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe the filling onto one cookie, pressing the other on to finish.