When a friendly food-junkie couple decided to compete for a better 'Oreo Taco' on camera, little did we know that the result would be what cookie and cream lovers' dreams are made of—a sinful indulgence.
Not many people can resist a bite of chocolate taco shell sandwich with a homemade cream filling, loaded with Oreo ice-cream dripping with chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles to top it off. It may not be even remotely close to healthy, but who cares!
Julia Goolia and J.P. Lambiase of Hellthy JunkFood Youtube channel, recently, made this hybrid of dessert taco and Oreo cookie sandwich that took the video publishing platform by storm and got them over 1,193,667 views in four days. They also operate a food website by same name, where they publish original recipes and fast-food and restaurant recipe remakes, with videos. Presently, they have more than 867,970 subscribers for their YouTube channel.
What started as an easy-to-achieve quest for J.P. who tried to create a taco shell by following predictable steps—fine-crushed Oreo cookies in a grinder, added vanilla essence to it, whipped butter, eggs and sugar separately before adding flour and crushed Oreo to it. He mixed it well to form a smooth dough. He then hand-flattened a small piece of dough, spread it on a shell mold made out of aluminum foil and set it in the oven to bake. With rest of the dough, he decided to bake a 'giant' Oreo. Honestly, it did look like he almost got it right, until he opened the oven to find a mess at the bottom of the oven. That was the end of his pursuit for the 'trophy' Oreo taco.
Julia, on the other hand, played it safe with the batter. Though she did not use Oreos as a core ingredient, she did manage to make the taco dessert resemble an Oreo cookie.
Her recipe started with mixing together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda and baking powder. In a separate bowl, she put melted butter, milk, and an egg, and whisked them before pouring it into the flour mix. She then mixed it to form a smooth, creamy, thick paste. A few drops of black food colouring and it looked like the batter for Oreo cookies. While J.P. tried baking his taco shells in vain, Julia decided to bring the griddle out and use the paste to make chocolate pancakes. Though it "looked like mush" initially, it took the form of thick fluffy pancakes once cooked but it was too thick to be moulded into taco shell shape. After multiple tries, she finally got the shape right. In next few steps, she made a vanilla cream filling for the Oreo taco sandwich. From there, it only got better and better with Oreo ice-cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Even before Julia took a large bite of the ultimate Oreo taco, we knew who was the winner.
Julia and J.P. have published the video of the friendly competition and the making of the prize-winning Oreo taco on YouTube.
