Oreo Double Whammy

I've been in somewhat of a baking-rut lately.  Between job interviews, dentist appointments, helping my parents install a deck on their house, and an inconvenient work schedule I ended up going a few weeks without time to try anything new.  I attended a friend's wedding about a week ago and had the opportunity to catch up with some other friends who were in town for the weekend.  What better way to bake than to bake for someone?

As I was walking around Target with one of my residents at work, I was struck by an Oreo craving.  Not wanting to cave and purchase a pack of Oreos that would likely end up sitting in my cupboard for a few months after I had a few, I decided to bake with them. 

I've posted on an Oreo Cheesecake before, and I did indeed use the same recipe.  The only change I made this time was size; I really do believe that anything that is good, is better mini in the baking world.  Instead of using a spring-form pan, I used muffin tins.  Using the same technique as I did with the cake bites, I placed strips of parchment paper in the tins before pressing the crust in.  The baking time was cut down to about 17 minutes. 

I also used mini-Oreos as the decoration on top.  While making the crust, I reserved the Oreo filling this time, since it really didn't seem to add much to the crust itself, and I had other things in mind for it...

Like Oreo filling for an Oreo cake! I have to admit that I used a box-cake for the chocolate cake part of this.  I was both in a pinch for time and feeling lazy.  Essentially, I took all of the Oreo filling out of an entire pack of Oreos, mixed it with enough cream cheese and sugar to make it spreadable, and used it as the center filling between two eight inch chocolate cakes.  I made a vanilla butter-cream frosting to ice the cake and used mini-Oreos and crushed Oreo cookies for the decorating.  My only complaint was that it was SUPER sweet... like an Oreo cookie I suppose.  I would definitely consider making this recipe again with minimal changes.  I really like how it ended up looking!