Valentine chocolate sandwich cookies

I made Valentine treats today. I first tasted chocolate sandwich cookies when a neighbor boy, who was in my husbands Sunday school class, brought them over as a thank you. I thought they were the cutest thing ever! Then I tasted one and was blown away at the light fluffiness of the cookie and the super yummy frosting. I immediately started daydreaming that our neighbors would continue bringing cookies over and that they would always bring these specific ones. Well I eventually had to get the recipe from the neighbors and was pleasantly surprised with the simplicity of it! Here it is-

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cookies-
2 18.25 oz.packages of chocolate cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup of oil

frosting-
1 8 oz. pack of cream cheese (softened)
4th cup of butter (softened)
1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

• Preheat the oven to 350
• Roll out 1 inch balls and place them 2 inches apart on un-greased cookie sheet. (Put cocoa powder on hands to prevent sticky mess.) Makes 6 dozen cookies.
  
• Bake each sheet 8 to 10 min.
• Let cool on cookie sheet 5 min. before removing, cookies will flatten as they cool.
• let cool till room temp. then frost half the cookies and top with other half.

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Super easy!

I, however, made it harder than it should have been by making the cake mix from scratch. What an adventure I had last night!
First I omitted the butter thinking it was not needed since there isn't any butter in the recipe. My first three sheets of cookies turned out like crumbly grainy biscuits. But in normal chocolate cake mix there is shortening, so I really messed things up. Then I added some butter and the rest turned out like crumbly slightly less grainy biscuit/cookies.

I felt disappointed yet determined not let my time and energy be spent in vain. So I proceeded to crumble up the first three sheets of already cooked cookies into the mixing bowl with more eggs (because the original eggs were already cooked) and even more butter. The cookie dough changed dramatically from the first batch of dough and I was unsure if this attempt at rescuing these cookies would work. It was very wet and gooey-- almost the texture of brownie mix. It did roll into balls though when I had cocoa powder on my hands, so I put them in the oven and waited to see the results of my experiment. To my excitement, relief and surprise they turned out GREAT! They flattened like they were supposed to and they were so light and fluffy like I remembered from the neighbors batch. Hooray! The fruits of my labors are so sweet! And I am super happy! What a night!

MORAL: Do NOT to omit the butter when making these from scratch. Maybe never make them from scratch at all! :) Who knows, It all depends on how brave I feel next time I bake.