Growing up, both of my grandmas had freezers full of things that little kids love. One of my favorites that my McConkie grandma often had was homemade Oreo cookies. They were so much better than actual Oreos, and not just because they were homemade, but because they had cream cheese icing. When I got older I learned the best part, they weren’t even that difficult to make – all you needed was a cake mix, 3/4 C shortening, and 2 eggs for the cookie part.

Lately, we’ve become sort of . . . particular about the foods we eat and have been doing our best to avoid processed foods, which means that for the most part we’ve said goodbye to deliciously addictive things like cookies made out of cake mixes and shortening. Since making this change we’ve made many, many delicious recipes from scratch, but there’s kind of been this tiny hole in my heart where homemade Oreos used to live. Recently I’ve been searching for a more natural recipe for the beloved cookie and after a few overly complicated and disastrous attempts where I actually threw cookies away, I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen with one simple google search. I only made the cookie part because it’s my opinion that cream cheese icing is the only way to go with homemade Oreos, but I think that little hole in my heart can heal now. Yum.

PS I am in no way saying that these cookies are nutritionally healthier than the cookies of my youth, but you’ll recognize and be able to pronounce all of the ingredients.