Oreos are truly a force to be reckoned with. They’re almost a staple snack food in American culture and have become synonymous with cookies as a result. Everybody likes them, to the point that there’s ongoing discussion about the correct way to eat the damn things. Nabisco themselves have even spunoff the cookies into different varieties like Marshmallow Crispy Oreos and Chocolate Chip Cookie Oreos. They as a snack or dessert have reached a transcendental food status in that they get treated as their own ingredient or flavor for other desserts. That’s pretty freakin’ impressive when you think about it. We see foods now that are straight-up called Oreo-variety, not just chocolate-cookie-variety. So good for Nabisco! Oreos are yummy, and deserve all their mystique. Now obviously, we’ve approached the subject of Oreo desserts before, but this will be a special occasion where Oreos and dessert pizza are combined together!

I’m sure there’s a few condescending foodies out there begrudgingly muttering “Big deal, I’ve seen Oreo pizzas before. Dominoes used to sell an Oreo pizza.” That’s great you remember that, however in our research we discovered that none of these mass-marketed Oreo pizzas ever were really that faithful to Oreos themselves and were more just cash-in partnerships that were little more than pizza crust with broken Oreos on top. Hell, most recipes we’ve found that imitate the marketed ones were basically just pizza with weird variations like marshmallow cream and Oreo crumbs and candy on top. Our pizza is different. Our Oreo pizza uses real Oreo cream filling and features chocolate crust. We went all out for this one.

The aforementioned chocolate crust was made from scratch by adding in cocoa powder to our homemade pizza dough, and a small addition of sugar to balance out the bitterness of the cocoa. It worked perfectly, yielding a perfect chocolate pizza dough. It was light and doughy, but had a rich chocolate taste to it. Like, just try to imagine it in your head, and that’s exactly what it tasted like. Like most dessert pizzas it received a brushing of melted butter since butter is a must for pastries.

Our biggest claim to fame for this pizza came from the use of actual Oreo cream. Or rather, not literally the actual cream from the cookies, but the general white-icing-style cream we made ourselves. There are recipes abound which imitate Oreo’s filling, and for the most part they’re pretty spot-on. Believe it or not, the secret ingredient is shortening. Yeah, the secret to the deliciously sweet and fluffy Oreo cream filling is basically vegetable lard. Ignoring that, we picked our favorite recipe for vanilla cream filling in preparation for baking.

Now, the caveat here is that we could not simply put the cream onto the pie immediately and bake, as dough takes a while to cook, and that much time in the oven would result in the icing burning. Sugar tends to become molten under high temperatures, and left for too long will just caramelize and eventually turn to burnt garbage pretty soon after. Rather than risk that, the chocolate dough itself was spread and parcooked on its own for a bit until it was mostly cooked. This is a pretty common theme with dessert pizzas, since sweet treats tend to be way more delicate in the oven than vegetables and meats. After removing the half-baked crust, the icing was spread on and topped with crushed Oreos as a garnish. One last trip back in the oven melted everything together and caramelized the sugars just enough to have a tiny bit of a crunch while still being gooey and yummy.

And hoooooly crap was this pizza delicious. As mentioned, we were aiming to stay as faithful to the Oreo flavor as possible and the homemade cream filling really helped with that. The dough on its own tasted fantastic since it was basically just sweet, chocolate-flavored bread and butter. But more importantly, the flavors all came together perfectly, proving once again that dessert pizzas deserve to be way more of a thing than they currently are in today’s food world.

Rating:

Chocolatey Pizza Goodness