Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies And Cream Cheese Start An Easy, Luscious No-Bake Cheesecake

In the great pantheon of sweet packaged snack foods, the classic Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie is inarguably the best. It is soft, chewy, has the perfect balance between those two oatmeal cookies sandwiching the whipped, smooth, and creamy filling, and has been an absolute icon of the snack game since baker O.D. McKee first started selling them out of the back of the family Whippet back in 1935.

But maybe you're a tinkerer. Maybe you're one of those people who sees something great and just has to find a way to add pockets or Bluetooth. Or maybe, for some reason, the simple brown sugar and vanilla pleasures of an unadorned Oatmeal Creme Pie just aren't enough for you. In which case, this recipe for a simple, no-bake, OCP-lined cheesecake is absolutely for you. It takes everything that's already good about the snack cake (its softness, sweetness, creamy middle, and easy oatmeal malleability) and cranks the volume to 11 by using the packaged snack cakes as both a crust and a crumble topping.

Is it too much? Maybe. But only if you're someone who thinks that joy and fun and whimsy are finite resources that must be rigidly policed. For the rest of us, it's just an over-the-top celebration of the potential for turning almost any beloved treat from childhood into cake. And making it is so easy, there's really no reason not to give it a try.

The first thing you have to do is purchase every Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie available in your county, then take half of them and Lego 'em into a springform pan. Seriously, it's going to take at least a dozen. Cut or tear as necessary because even though the recipe below says that covering every inch of the base isn't necessary, not doing so just feels like asking for trouble.

Next, build a nice wall around the inside edge of the pan with more pies cut in half to form a raised crust. This will be filled with a mixture of cream cheese, instant pudding, maybe a little vanilla extract and lemon juice. You can actually take this opportunity to doctor the filling however you like. You can liven it up with sprinkles, add melted chocolate for a chocolate cheesecake, throw in some nutmeg and rum for a grown-up holiday eggnog variation. Considering what you're already attempting with your pudding and creme pies, there's really no line here you cannot cross.

The final step comes after your cheesecake is set. That's when you take all your remaining Oatmeal Creme Pies and crumble them over the top — which is really what makes this such an extraordinary example of almost Dadaist excess. The OCP crust was never going to be enough on its own, because adding the crumbled pies as a topping? That mimics the presentation of the original form, turning it into a full-on cheesecake sandwiched between oatmeal cookies. A true and final triumph of both form and function.