Oatmeal CookieBlog: How to Stuff a Cookie

Learn how to stuff cookies and soon you'll be stuffing your face.

Follow these easy steps to add an unexpected burst of flavor to your favorite cookie recipe. Stuff chocolate cookies with peanut butter, peanut butter cookies with jelly, sugar cookies with vanilla creme, cinnamon cookies with chocolate, oatmeal cookies with cheesecake (pictured here). The possibilities are endless.

1. Mix your filling together in a small bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until step 4. Chilling the filling will make it firm and easy to scoop when it's time to stuff your cookies.

2. Shape your cookie dough into balls--about 2 tablespoons each. Using a cookie scoop is the best way to produce consistently round, equally shaped cookies.

3. Position the dough balls 2" apart on a Silpat- or parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Twelve dough balls (4 rows of 3) will fit nicely on a single cookie sheet.

4. Using your hands, break each dough ball in half and then flatten each half into a round disk about 1/8" thick.

5. Remove the filling from the refrigerator.

6. Using a teaspoon, place a scoop of the firm filling into the middle of one of the flattened cookie dough disks. Place another disk on top and then pinch the edges of the 2 disks together to seal them.

7. Roll the sealed disks between your hands to form a round ball.

8. Repeat the process until you've filled each of the dough balls on the cookie sheet.

9. Place the stuffed dough balls in the freezer for 5 minutes. This is to ensure that the filling is solid when you place the cookies in the oven. If the filling is too soft or too liquid, you risk having the filling leak out of the cookies while they bake.

10. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and let stand for 2 minutes. Then place cookies on a wire rack to cool.

Here's a short video of the process.