Oreo Cookies and Cream Cake

Easter is this weekend and my favorite treat that I buy yearly are the Cadbury chocolate eggs. They are tiny egg shaped chocolates that have a thin crisp candy coating covering the most smooth and creamy milk chocolate. I decided to make a cake and incorporate these eggs as part of the decoration. I decided to make Oreos cookies and cream cake with an Oreo cream filling. Oreos are the most iconic American chocolate sandwiched cookies with a vanilla filling. This cake is a basic white cake with pieces of Oreos folded into the batter. The filling is a mixture of mascarpone and whipped cream with more crushed Oreos folded into the cream. Covering the cake is silky vanilla buttercream. The cake is buttery, the cream is rich with Oreo cookie accents throughout and the buttercream ties the cake together.

Oreo Cake

adapted from Preppy Kitchen

• 2 cups All purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar divided
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 3 egg whites
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 cup chopped Oreos

Grease the cake pans with butter and lightly coat the pans with some flour. This will prevent the cake from sticking to the pans. Cream the butter with 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Add the sour cream and milk. Mix in flour and fold in chopped Oreos. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar until stiff peaks and add 1/3 of the whipped whites into the cake batter and mix to incorporate. Fold in the remaining egg whites into the batter and stir in the oreos. Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans and place in a preheated 350 degree F oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the toothpick inserted into the center of the cake pan comes out clean. Let the cakes cool completely.

The cakes can be made ahead of time and frozen.

Mascarpone Whipped Cream

• 2 ounces mascarpone cheese
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup chopped Oreos
  Place the mascarpone into a mixing bowl. Slowly mix in the heavy cream. This prevents lumps. Add in the powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Mix until barley firm peaks. If you over mix mascarpone and whip cream the cream will turn grainy. Fold in the crushed cookies. Since the cake, cookies and buttercream are all sweet elements, I like to lightly sweeten the cream to balance out the cake.

Swiss Meringue Vanilla Buttercream

• 4 large egg whites
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
  Place the sugar in a bowl with egg whites and place over a pot with simmering water, making sure the bowl does not touch the water. Whisk the egg whites and sugar until frothy. When the sugar is dissolved and the whites are slightly warm to touch remove from the heat and whisk until firm peaks. Slowly add in the butter. Keep whisking until the butter and egg whites become a smooth and homogenous frosting. Mix in the vanilla extract. I like to use Swiss meringue method of buttercream because I find it is less sweet than American buttercream which is made with confectioner's sugar. I also prefer the texture of a Swiss buttercream. You can use any of your favorite buttercream recipes.

Assembling the Cake

Trim the tops off of the cake to make an even surface. Place one cake on a piece of parchment or cake board. Fill a pastry bag with buttercream and pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cake. This will make a wall so the filling of the cake will not seep out of the cake. Fill the inside of the buttercream ring with Oreo cream filling. Place another cake layer on top and repeat the same steps with buttercream and Oreo cream.

For the last layer, I always invert the cake so the bottom of the cake is on top. This helps with leveling the top of the cake.

Fill the bag with remaining buttercream and roughly pipe around the entire cake to cover it. If you want to make a color pattern on the bottom of the cake, take some buttercream and tint it with food coloring and pipe a color border first before piping the remaining buttercream. Using a spatula, smooth the buttercream around the cake and over the top.

To get a really smooth finish, I usually use a slightly heated bench scraper and hold it to the edge of the cake and drag it around the cake to get the buttercream super smooth. What also helps is using a cake decorating table. Bench scrappers are easily found at a local hardware store.

You can finish the cake with any decorations or leave it plain. I had some fondant which is like edible sugared play dough where people use it to cover cakes or make decorations. I made some flowers but you can easily purchase some sugared flowers or you can also use fresh flowers.

I hope this post will offer some basic tips to help with some techniques for frosting and decorating a cake. Thank you for visiting my page and Have a Happy Easter!