Amish Homemade Little Debbies Recipe (Copycat Oatmeal Cream Pies)

This post was updated in February 2026

Ah, Little Debbie. She has a snack for you. I remember those jingles growing up. Now I look at the ingredient label of these pre-packaged, processed snacks and kind of cringe. But I still crave the occasional zebra cake. Or Santa cake at Christmas. Or oatmeal cream pie.

My grandma would almost always have a box of Little Debbies on her kitchen counter when I was a kid, so there is a whiff of nostalgia for me whenever I see these cakes. I first made this post back in 2013 and the following sentence was in it:

Why is it that my Grandma can be ticking along fine at age 89 and she's broken every health rule in the book, including years of snacking on Little Debbie cakes? Once you make it to her age, I say just keep on doing what you're doing.

God bless her, Grandma lived another two years after I wrote that, Little Debbies and all.

Little Debbies were on my mind when I originally did this post because I saw these "coral reef cakes" on a display inside the supermarket. Upon closer inspection they look like just a seasonal, summery cake of the kind they usually sell. But it still looked alluring and stoked nostalgia within me. But, alas, I passed.

Among Little Debbies, my favorites are probably the zebra cakes and oatmeal cream pies.

The Amish enjoy "copycat" recipes — and I mean that in a fun way, not "gee, why are you ripping off Little Debbie?" I even had an Amish woman give me a recipe for homemade Pizza Hut breadsticks. I have misplaced it, but I am determined to find it somewhere buried in the bowels of my office. I have seen recipes for what are simply referred to as "homemade Little Debbies" in several Amish cookbooks over the years. These resemble whoopie pies, but there's a key difference: these are a chewy, soft cookie sandwiched around a creamy filling. Traditional whoopie pies tend to be a lighter, fluffier cookie with a "matching filling" inside — think peanut butter cookies with peanut butter filling for a peanut butter whoopie pie.

So enjoy this Amish homemade Little Debbies recipe straight from an Amish woman in Ohio — a from-scratch alternative to the store-bought version, without all the preservatives.unpronouncable ingredient names!

Homemade Little Debbies

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Ingredients

  

• ½ cup butter
• ½ cup Crisco
• 3 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups quick oats
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Filling

• 3 egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1 /2 cup Crisco
• 5 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons milk

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 350 degree
• Cream together sugar with the butter and shortening..
• Add eggs beating well, add vanilla and dry ingredients and beat together.
• Bake for 9-12 minutes until done but soft.

Filling

• Beat egg whites (reserving yolks for another recipe) then once fluffy add vanilla and milk
• .Beat in powdered sugar, shortening and flour
• .Beat until light and frosting like.
• Once cookies are cool frost one and sandwich with another one.