Classic Oatmeal Cream Pie

An oatmeal cream pie is the ultimate sandwich cookie treat. Taking inspiration from the classic Little Debbie's Oatmeal Creme Pie, these are a homemade version, combining soft oatmeal cookies with a marshmallowy buttercream filling.

What is an Oatmeal Cream Pie

An oatmeal cream pie (or creme pie, depending on who you're talking to) is a classic American lunchbox treat. They are cookie sandwiches, characterised two soft and chewy molasses oatmeal cookies with a marshmallow-like vanilla buttercream filling. The most famous version is the Little Debbie's brand, which began selling the oatmeal creme pies in the 1930s.

Super Soft Oatmeal Cookies

In order to make these cookies, you'll first need super soft oatmeal cookies!

Ingredients for the Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies:

• Butter
• Molasses
• Sugar - both light brown muscovado and standard caster (or granulated) sugar.
• Egg
• Vanilla
• Flour
• Baking Soda and Salt
• Spices - I use a mix of cinnamon and mixed spice.
• And, of course, oats!

Tip for Making Soft Oatmeal Sandwich Cookie

So, one of the trademark elements of the classic Little Debbie's Oatmeal Creme Pie is the super soft thin oatmeal cookie. This can be difficult to recreate at home, especially when most cookie recipes encourage you to aim for a thicker biscuit.

There are a few key tricks to making these soft thin cookies:

• Use melted butter, not just softened.
• Whisk the sugars, molasses and butter together until fully incorporated. The butter will initially try to separate from the sugars, but with a bit of whisking this will all come together as the sugars begin to dissolve into the butter.
• Avoid over-baking and take these out as soon as they start to golden at the edges.
• Let the cookies cool for five to ten minutes on the baking tray before removing to a wire rack.

Why Melted Butter Matters

The consistency of butter matters in baking.

In most cases, you want room temperature ingredients (including butter) so that these mix well together and bake evenly. For cookies, for example, room temperature butter helps keep cookies from spreading too much. In fact, many recipes will suggest chilling the scooped dough before baking, to reduce the spread even further and produce nice thick and chewy finished products. This is the same logic for pastry crusts.

The style of a knock off Little Debbie's Creme Pie demands something a bit different. The goal here is actually a thin cookie, with a bit of a soft bendy finish. This means melting the butter is key.

Melting the butter before using it produces a wetter dough and encourages more spread when baking. The result is a softer thinner final biscuit.

Size of the Oatmeal Cookies for the Oatmeal Cream Pie

You can make either seven giant oatmeal cream pies with this recipe, or about fourteen normal size.

For the giant oatmeal cream pie, I used an OXO #40 Good Grips dough scoop. This dollops out about 1.5 tablespoons of batter, which spread to large cookies.

If you want to make smaller cookies, you can either use a smaller scoop or a kitchen spoon to portion these. As the dough is very wet, they will spoon out and spread easily.

Marshmallow Buttercream

The filling for an oatmeal cream pie is a bit of a contentious question. Many recipes will simply call for a well whipped vanilla buttercream. But, for me the Little Debbie's original has a marshmallowy quality, that demands a bit of marshmallow in the filling.

Ingredients for Vanilla Marshmallow Buttercream

My marshmallow buttercream is quick and easy to whip up with the following:

• Butter - it is important that this is unsalted and at room temperature.
• Powdered icing sugar - if yours is particularly lumpy, it is best to sift this for a smooth finish.
• Marshmallow fluff
• Vanilla extract
• Milk

Marshmallow Buttercream Process

Making this marshmallow buttercream is very similar to my standard American buttercream recipe, with one big exception:

• Whip or whisk the ingredients - don't worry about adding air. In traditional buttercream, you aren't looking to whip the ingredients into something fluffy as this can cause air bubbles in decorating. For this cream pie filling, you do want a light and fluffy finish.

I used a handheld electric beater to whisk together the butter, marshmallow fluff and powdered sugar. Be careful as the thickness of the fluff might initially make beating difficult, but once this is incorporated it will begin to be smooth.

Add the vanilla and the milk last to form a light and smooth frosting. You can add extra milk if you feel your frosting is too thick or more powdered sugar if you feel it is over runny.

Tips for Filling an Oatmeal Cream Pie

Once you have your cookies and cream, you need to assemble the oatmeal cream pie. This is best done with a piping bag.

• Fill your bag with the frosting.
• Cut off the tip so that you have a 2cm opening.
• Pipe onto the flat base of one of your oatmeal cookies.
• Sandwich this with the base of another cookie.
• Repeat this process until you have paired all of your cookies into sandwiches.

Alternatively, you can make your own DIY piping bag with any square or rectangular plastic bag. Simply fill this with your frosting and cut off a corner as you would cut the tip of the piping bag.

One top tip I have for sandwiching any cookie, is to pre-pair your cookies before beginning to pipe filling.

I'm not great with precision in my cookie sizes, so some are usually on the smaller side and some a bit larger. When you are sandwiching cookies, you want two similar sized biscuits to be paired. Otherwise, you they'll look a bit odd and your filling might overflow the smaller cookie.

By pairing up your cookies before you actually begin to sandwich them with filling, you can ensure that you've matched up similar sizes. These will sandwich nicely, you'll avoid mess and the actual filling process will go more quickly.

FAQs for Oatmeal Cream Pie

If you like this recipe, check out some other cookies:

• Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies
• My Favourite Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Classic Oatmeal Cookies