So, I posted a picture of these oatmeal sandwich cookies here months ago as a Wordless Wednesday post. The picture was popular and requests (or demands) were made for the recipe. I intended to post the recipe but I goofed and didn’t have a legible copy of it and the cookbook had been returned to the library. I apologized for this and got a little grief from some of my readers for it.

Fast forward to now. The book was finally available at the library. The recipe is posted below and I’m very very very sorry for the delay.

These cookies are pretty similar to Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. If you enjoyed those as a kid, bake these cookies. If you never had them, bake these cookies…as long as you like oatmeal.

I baked these again tonight and made a slight change to the recipe that I didn’t make the first time I made them. The filling recipe calls for 1/2 cup vegetable shortening. The first time I made these, we could definitely tell that there was shortening in the filling. I’ve got no problems with shortening but I don’t really want to taste it in my food. So when I made the filling today, I used 1/4 cup shortening and 1/4 cup margarine. This did the trick…it didn’t alter the texture of the filling at all but it did eliminate the Crisco taste in the filling. Please note that I did not change the amount of butter in the filling!

The only other change I made to the recipe is that I made smaller cookies.

The recipe below is the original recipe as originally printed in The All-American Cookie Book by Nancy Baggett. I have added a few parenthetical notes about the recipe.

“Old-Timey” Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

From The All-American Cookie Book by Nancy Baggett

Ingredients

Cookies:

• 2 2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• generous 1 3/4 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 2/3 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 3 large eggs
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

Filling:

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup (1 stick, plus 2 2/3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening (See my substitution suggestion in the text above.)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 jar (1 1/3 cups) marshmallow creme (Marshmallow fluff!!)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease several baking sheets or coat with nonstick spray. (I used sheets of parchment paper instead.)
2. In a medium bowl, thoroughly stir together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on high speed, beat together the brown sugar, butter, shortening, and corn syrup until well blended and lightened, about 1 1/2 minutes.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla, and beat until very light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
5. Beat in half of the flour mixture.
6. Beat or stir in the remaining flour mixture and the oats until evenly incorporated.
7. Drop the dough onto the baking sheets using a 1/8-cup measure or coffee scoop, spacing about 3 inches apart. Using a lightly greased hand, pat down the cookies just slightly. (I used a cookie scoop for this and made slightly smaller cookies.)
8. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, in the middle of the oven for 9 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned and barely firm when lightly pressed in the centers. Reverse the sheet from front to back halfway through to ensure even browning.
9. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack and let stand until the cookies firm up slightly, about 2 minutes. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to wire racks. Let stand until completely cooled. (Because I used parchment paper, the spatula wasn’t necessary as the cookies could easily be lifted off the parchment.)
10. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat together the powdered sugar, butter, shortening, corn syrup, vanilla and salt until well blended and fluffy. Add the marshmallow creme and beat until well blended and smooth.
11. Place half of the cookies underside up. Spoon a generous 2 tablespoons filling in the center of each cookie. Spread the filling to within 1/2 inch of the edge. Cover each with a second cookie of about the same size. Gently press down so the filling almost extends to the edges. (Be generous with the filling. You will have enough.)
12. Store in individual plastic bags in the refrigerator for up to 1 week or freeze for up to 1 month. Let come to room temperature before serving. (Individual plastic bags seems really wasteful to me…a large plastic container in the fridge worked for me.)

Recipe note as printed in cookbook: Dough that is too warm may yield cookies that spread too much. If the baked cookies on your first sheet are more than about 3 1/4 inches across, refrigerate the remaining dough for a few minutes before continuing. This will produce slightly sturdier, more compact rounds, which are better suited for sandwiches.

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Eating homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning is apparently a tradition in my boyfriend’s family. Last year we spent Christmas morning alone and he made the cinnamon rolls himself the night before. This year, we spent Christmas morning at home alone again and I was given the cinnamon roll baking duties. I should mention that I was given this duty with a warning of “They’d better be good.” It was almost an insinuation that I would ruin Christmas if they weren’t good.

Cinnamon rolls (or buns) are one of my favorite yeasted breads but it’s hard to make a batch that taste good both fresh out of the oven and reheated 2 days later. Almost any recipe tastes good fresh…it’s the 2 days later thing that poses a challenge. Last year’s Christmas cinnamon rolls were from Baking Illustrated and they were mediocre at best. They got rather hard when reheated. We blame the recipe not the baker. But I should note that the cream cheese frosting recipe for their cinnamon buns is a winner. I also made the pumpkin cinnamon rolls from the blog Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk a couple of times this year and while they were rather fantastic, we wanted to try a new recipe for Christmas. So I went to the internet.

I wanted to make delicious cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I also wanted them to be pretty much ready to go Christmas morning. Yet I didn’t want to bake them the night before. Nothing beats that fresh from the oven taste. I cruised Food Gawker and Tastespotting for just a few minutes when I found the 3 magic words I was looking for: overnight cinnamon rolls. In addition, those 3 magic words were preceded by the name Alton Brown. This sounded like a winner. Despite my adoration of Alton Brown (and frequent viewership when I used to have cable), I have never made any of his recipes. Until now.

These were perfect. All the work was done on Christmas Eve. All I had to do on Christmas morning was let them rise for a little while and bake them. I made the icing the night before as well. The only hard part on Christmas morning was waiting for them to be cool enough to eat without burning the roof of my mouth.

I think the loads of egg yolks and buttermilk in this recipe are what made them so fantastic. Don’t skip the buttermilk. And try to find really eggy eggs. The kind with blazing orange yolks. Yes, they’re probably way more expensive than the other eggs…but they’re worth every penny.

The recipe for Alton Brown’s Overnight Cinnamon Rolls was found on the Food Network website. Or click here.

Since it’s hard for me to follow a recipe verbatim, the handful of changes I made to the recipe are listed below for your edification.

• The recipe gives directions for making 12 large rolls. We prefer smaller ones so I divided the dough into smaller pieces and made 24 rolls. They still fit in my 9″x13″ pan and all was well. So well that I ate 3 of the little ones in barely one sitting. This might explain why I felt ill for a good part of Christmas Day.
• We like filling. Lots and lots of filling. To accommodate for our love of filling, I made a batch and a half of it. And I probably used a little more cinnamon than the recipe wanted me to use. All was well again.
• Despite my claim of hating raisins, I like them baked into bread with cinnamon. So I added raisins to the recipe. Just sprinkle them in over the filling before you roll the dough.
• I used half the prescribed amount of sugar and substituted honey for the sugar that I didn’t use. I pretty much do this with all of the breads I bake. Honey makes it better. Especially when it’s local honey made by someone you know.
• I added a little bit of vanilla extract to the icing. Maybe a teaspoon. I have to admit that I did not measure the vanilla. I rarely do. It’s risky not to measure but I haven’t totally messed up a recipe this way yet.

Because these turned out so well, I didn’t ruin Christmas. Thank you Alton Brown!

I hope all of your holidays went as well as mine did!

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