These extra chocolatey, fudge-y cookie bars are full of Golden Oreos and white chocolate chips! They’ll be snatched off the Christmas cookie plate in no time.

The Cookie Countdown continues! Here is cookie number two, even though it’s technically a cookie bar but the road to these cookie bars results in a cookie textured thing.

And now for a little history! Back before I was a blogger, my favorite chocolate chip cookie in the world had a secret ingredient: Oreos. Something about the filling and the cookie baked into a classic chocolate chip cookie took things to the next level. It wasn’t overpowering, but it added something. It’s one of those inexplicable things of life, just like why Oreos are inexplicably one of the greatest things ever made. (You should read this article about how addictive Oreos really are.  It’s frightening and it’s making me drool as I type this.)

The moral of the story is that I add Oreos into everything I can and the result is always fantastic. This time around, I made inverted Oreo chocolate chip cookies: instead of plain old dough, I turned it into chocolate dough and instead of classic Oreos, I used Golden Oreos instead.

I did a little bit of fiddling with the dough to make it slightly softer and chewier. How? I added an egg yolk. Egg yolk is a magical ingredient, my friends. It adds tons and tons of moisture to dough. It was just that extra touch I needed.

I also substituted some of the flour for Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder. You can’t just add cocoa powder because it sort of acts like flour, so you have to do some adding of cocoa and subtracting of flour. That’s the easy part. The hard part is selecting cocoa. I highly, highly recommend Hershey’s. I used Hershey’s Special Dark because I like how rich it makes things, but you’re welcome to use Hershey’s classic cocoa powder and you’ll still have a fantastic cookie. (Why am I so picky about cocoa powders? I’ve tried a range of powders, and fortunately, one of the most affordable aka Hershey’s has some of the best depth and flavor. Boring chocolate is a boring life! <– I made that up.)

As for those Golden Oreos: you can use Double stuf or regular filling. If you only have classic Oreos in your pantry, those are fine, too! Both work great! In fact, any Oreo will do the trick. (I’ve made these cookies with mint Oreos, too!) The filling melts into the cookie while baking and wow-wow-wee-wow. Be prepared to have your top blown off.

My usual “list of random things to successful baking” tips:

• Set your butter out at room temperature for at least thirty minutes. When you stick a finger into the butter, it should make a nice little finger print. Why? It incorporates better into the sugar.
• When you beat the butter and sugars, make sure the butter is fully incorporated and that there are no lumps. Lumps in butter lead to unevenly baked cookies. (Trust me, it happens to the best of us.)
• Leave the eggs out with the butter, or even leave them out overnight if you know you’re baking the next day. They incorporate much easier. Pro tip: If you don’t have time to set the eggs out, fill a bowl with warm water and soak the eggs for eight to ten minutes. This will bring them to room temperature quickly.
• Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl before you add it to the wet ingredients. This also prevents uneven baking.
• Speaking of salt: don’t forget the salt! One of the biggest travesties of human history is cutting out salt from baked goods. It is a necessary flavor enhancer; your cookies will taste 100x better if you use a teaspoon of salt in your cookies. Pro tip: While I like salted butter, I prefer to control how much salt I put in so I usually use unsalted butter. However, if you’re using salted butter, no need to add more salt.
• Spray your 9×13 pan with cooking spray and line with parchment paper! The parchment paper sticks to the cooking spray very nicely and then the cookie bars pop out very easily that way, so it’s a win-win all around. Huzzah!

Now give these a whirl and let me know how they go!

Brita