Oatmeal Cream Pies

Does anyone remember those Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies? In high school, I was addicted to those.  I forgot about them for several years until I went on a binge during my first pregnancy.  Halfway through the box, I realized that they were nowhere near as good as I had remembered them to be.  Had product quality declined?  I doubt it. Rather, they were probably never that good to begin with, and now that my palate had grown way beyond the manufactured delights of Little Debbie treats I was just now noticing.

Anyhoo...my September issue of Everyday Food arrived in the mail, and what did I see on page 109?

Real Oatmeal Cream Pies! And just in time for a friend's 50th birthday party. 

The recipe makes only 13 pies, so naturally I doubled it.  The original recipe calls for regular oats and NOT the quick-cooking variety, but since that's all I had, I went with it.   It seemed to work out just fine.

Because these cookies must be made into sandwiches, it's important to get the cookie size quite uniform for easy cookie assembly later on.  Many of my cookies were different sizes, but because I had doubled the recipe, it was easy to find a match for each one. And easy to eat the odd one out.

The cream cheese frosting filling made me pause...cream cheese?  In an oatmeal cream pie?  I was a bit skeptical and almost made my regular buttercream icing instead.  But since I already had cream cheese frosting from another project, I gave it a try.

Nom nom nom nom nom.  Deeeeeeeeeeeelicious.

I think I ate a few cookies this way, then remembered that I needed to be making sandwiches, and the majority of the sandwiches needed to make it to a birthday party.  Without my teeth marks in them.

In the end, the oatmeal cream pies turned out beautifully, and there were plenty left for the party.

Now these, my dears, are true oatmeal cream pies.  As they should be.  Make some today.  Nom.