What's even more magical than homemade Oreo cookies? RAINBOW Oreos! Delicious chocolate sandwich cookies with a rainbow of frosting in every bite.
I've had the idea for these rainbow oreo cookies for months now, and am so excited to report that my idea for making the rainbow filling worked absolutely perfectly!
Just look at those perfect rainbows peeking out of the dark chocolate cookies! It was a little fussy, but really easy to do.
How to Make Homemade Rainbow Oreos
Start by baking up a batch of circle-shaped chocolate cut-out sugar cookies. My recipe makes an intensely chocolate flavored, crisp cookie that balances the sweetness of the icing filling well.
I was making these cookies for Pride, and wanted to show off the rainbow filling even more than you can just see around the edges, so I cut out hearts from the centers of some of my cookies. If you want to create a little peek-a-boo cutout like this, use a small cookie cutter to cut the shape out of the freshly baked cookie right after it comes out of the oven, when it's still hot and soft. You could cutout the middle shapes before baking, because this cookie recipe doesn't spread much at all, but I like the crispness of the cut out shape you get when you cut it after baking.
Mix up a batch of classic American buttercream icing. You want it to be pretty stiff, so the filling doesn't squish out the sides of your sandwich cookie when you take a bite.
Divide into six equal parts, and use food coloring to make a rainbow of frosting colors. I like using Americolor gel food coloring to color my icing. It doesn't take much to get lovely, intense colors.
Place the rainbow colored frosting in disposable piping bags, and cut off the tips. Do your very best to cut them in the same place so that the icing comes out of each bag with the same thickness.
The best way to do this perfectly would be to use round piping tips that are all the same size, but while I have multiples of all of my piping tips, I don't have six of the same size. So I just cut the piping bags and did my best, and it worked wonderfully.
Place a sheet of parchment paper in a baking pan. Pipe even rows of the frosting on the parchment paper, doing your very best to make sure that the lines touch each other.
When you've filled the parchment sheet with row upon row of rainbow frosting, place a second sheet of parchment paper on top of the icing, and gently press and smooth it with a fondant smoother.This flattens the rounded tops of the piped rows of frosting, and makes sure that all of the stripes of icing are connected.
Do not remove the top parchment paper yet! Put the whole thing in the freezer and let it harden. I let mine freeze for about an hour.
After the icing has frozen solid, peel back the top layer of parchment paper and use a round cookie cutter to cut the rainbow frosting into circles for the cookie filling. I have a nested set of round cookie cutters and chose a circle just a little bit smaller for the filling than the one I used to cut out my chocolate cookies.
Wipe away any frosting that sticks to your cookie cutter so you get nice, clean cuts every time. The buttercream defrosts pretty quickly, so you may find that you have to put the tray back in the freezer for a few minutes to harden up again as you're cutting out all the icing centers. I filled two baking trays with rainbow frosting, so it worked perfectly for me to switch the trays when the icing started to soften. That way I could keep working on one tray while the other one was firming up again in the freezer.
Once you've cut circles out of the whole tray, be sure to put it back in the freezer to let harden completely before attempting to assemble the rainbow Oreos.
When the icing is frozen solid, you can use an offset spatula to remove the excess icing from around the circle cut-outs and lift the rainbow frosting circles.
Place your rainbow filling on the backside of a round cookie, and top with a second cookie. Again, if the icing softens too much and it becomes difficult to transfer the rainbow frosting filling, just pop the tray back in the oven until it hardens again.
My cousin saw these and said that that my job title should be "Professional Creator of Joy." Best compliment ever! Yes, it's a little fussy and silly to make these, but making them made me happy. And then they made the people I gave them to happy. There's no better reward than that!
I'll never get too old to be delighted by rainbows!
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