Oh, I know this is a book blog, not a recipe blog, but I absolutely have to share this one. I’m not going to make you scroll with a long-ass story to get to the recipe, just a very quick why of it. One of our friends brought Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme pies to a D&D session recently, and it had me drooling. Unbeknownst to me, my husband went looking for copycat recipes to see if we could make a gluten-free version, but all the copycat recipes were big chunky oatmeal cookies and buttercream. Which is SO not right. Little Debbie’s pies are molasses based, with marshmallow fluff! So we set out to make our own, and OH MY GOD DID WE NAIL IT.

I have the recipe here for Molasses-Oatmeal Cookies, and a link to the Marshmallow Fluff recipe, which we only added a pinch of salt to. The cookies can be made gluten free or with regular flour. This is a big batch – we got three dozen sandwiches.

Molasses-Oatmeal Cookies with Marshmallow Fluff (Copycat Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie cookies)

1 cup Oat Flour (I pulsed some gluten-free oats in a small food processor until they were mostly flour.)

3 1/2 cups Other Flours (you can use all-purpose here, or your favorite gluten-free all-purpose blend; I used 1 cup almond meal, 1 cup tigernut flour, 1 cup of an all-purpose blend, and 1/2 cup of sweet rice flour.)

1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar (I used light because that’s what I had; dark would give it more molasses flavor, though)
1/2 cup molasses
2 large eggs
4 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions

1. Throw the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of your favorite stand mixer, beat until it’s fluffy – about two minutes or so.
2. While those are creaming, combine all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, spices, down through the salt) and whisk together.
3. Pour molasses into your creamed butter and sugar and whip it again until fluffy looking again. (You can taste it here, it’s delicious! Not that I don’t sneak more of it at the end when there are eggs in it anyway…)
4. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until combined.
5. Add the flour mixture, about a cup at a time, beating on slow speed each time until incorporated.
6. At this point you’ll have a very soft, somewhat sticky dough. Dump this into a bowl and shove it in the fridge for at least an hour, but not more than two. You don’t want it too hard to scoop. (Alternately, if you do this ahead of time and chill it overnight, just pull it out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for a bit to warm up and soften a little.)
7. Use this chilling time to make the Marshmallow Fluff. The only change we made here was adding a pinch of salt at the very end, after it was whipped. (Because we only have one mixer bowl, and you don’t want any fat left in it before making the fluff, we washed it thoroughly after the cookies and wiped it with vinegar, then washed it again.)
8. Preheat your oven to 350, and line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper (silicon sheets would probably work too, but I love my parchment paper!)
9. Scoop the dough out with a portion scoop; after some trial and error, the 1 Tablespoon scoop makes the perfect sized cookies for this. I know that sounds small, but trust me on this. (I like to use my biggest scoop for cookies, so believe me when I say you really do want your smallest one here!)
10. Scoop out dough, dump into your hand, roll it into a ball, put it on the sheet. DO NOT FLATTEN. They will flatten themselves in the oven! I got 12 cookies per sheet. Make sure you let the sheets cool before putting another batch of cookies on them each time. Hot cookie sheets = more spread on your cookies, and they already cook up pretty flat!
11. Bake for 10 minutes. No more, no less. This is the perfect softness. (You might have to cook longer if you made bigger cookies.)
12. Let cool. Now we’re on to Assembly!

We took a couple hour break here, as baking cookies is always the most tiring part of the process. This also let them cool completely. Then we took the cookies, the fluff, and an off-set spatula and a spoon over to the dining table and made sandwiches!

Handle the cookies carefully; they are quite soft and will bend or break if you press too hard. This is how you want them! Just be gentle. Each sandwich gets about 2 Tablespoons of Fluff. Just eyeball it. You might taste-test a couple to see how much fluff you like in your sandwiches. I certainly won’t tell! I spread the fluff out on a cookie before topping it with another; my husband liked to dollop it in the middle, then squish it out to the edges with the cookie he put on top. It is up to you! We had a few extra cookies left over when we’d gotten all the way through the fluff, but this is a delicious recipe even without the fluff, so that’s certainly not a hardship!

I am SO HAPPY to have gluten free oatmeal creme pies. I LOVE these cookies. And this marshmallow creme is TO DIE FOR, too. You could certainly make a double-batch of it and eat the remainder by the spoonful. I’ll admit I was kinda sad we didn’t have any left over!