Last week while I was grocery shopping I was heading down my favourite aisle (baking!) when I passed a giant wall of Oreos at the end of the aisle. They were on sale for $1 each. Score. I'm sure normal peoples first thought would have been, "Yum, Oreos". Mine was, "Yay, cupcakes!" I grabbed a box of the strawberry ones and chucked them in the trolley.

It took me a while to decide on what I wanted to do. My initial thought had been cupcakes, perhaps buttercakes baked with fresh strawberries inside. But in the end I went for something a little different.

I've never actually had strawberry Oreos before. Oreos aren't exactly my favourite biscuit in the world. There are so many Australian cream biscuits that are just to die for that I've never turned to Oreos unless in need of that lovely dark colour for something like a cheesecake base. 

But strawberry. Anything with strawberry and I am hooked. 

I decided I wanted to mimic the aesthetic of the oreo itself. So I baked a sheet of mudcake and used a fluted cutter to represent the crimped edge of the biscuit. Though the cake is so moist the patterns were less obvious after a bit of handling. 

I then layered the cakes with strawberry cream, topped it with a little strawberry buttercream and then finally decorated with segments of Oreos and crumbs. 

They're too tall to fit into your mouth in one go, so disassembling them like an Oreo is half the fun. If you can get your hands on a good strawberry essence it will make these cakes something special. I use the Queens brand and love the flavour. When I took these out of their container today for photos, I got this lovely waft of strawberry that smelled so much like the strawberry in Neapolitan ice cream. It reminded me of how I needed to use it more often. 

Here's how I did it. This recipe makes 6-8 cakes, depending on the size of your cutter.