Oh. My. Gosh.
Whoopie pies.
You don’t know what they are? Let me enlighten you. They are basically two cakey cookies, with a light, creamy frosting in between. There are many variations of whoopie pies; I even have a full recipe book of them. However, I just wanted some chocolate cream-cheese whoopie pies. Plain and simple. Yummy. Warms the soul. Ya know. I also figured doing something outlandishly crazy would probably not be the best idea when I’m not even eating the majority of the product. Indeed, these were not for me to merely munch on in my spare time. They were for my wonderful team in “celebration” of the end of rowing preseason. The sport is hard enough on the water, so when you give the coaches two weeks to torture us with land-training, it’s very…let’s just say I couldn’t quite feel my legs for the first couple of days! So as a last hoorah with school starting Tuesday and all (there goes my time for experimenting in the kitchen. It’s really bumming me out, actually) I decided to make whoopie pies for the team. It also worked out perfectly because it was a nice reward at the end of practice after a surprise test (think of a rowing test as a time trial, except much more monotonous and much more detailed in every single thing you do). So. Yay chocolate whoopie pies. Also shout-out to Georgia who let me take a picture of her whoopie pie, as seen above. ;D
I found this recipe on Food Network.com. I actually used (and modified) one recipe for the pies then used another for the filling. I’ll post the original links and the end of the post. I modified the whoopie pies by first of all halving the recipe (the original recipe would have made 76 individual whoopie pies. Sorry, but I don’t have the time or budget to do that, nor do I have 76 people to whom I can give whoopie pies). If you go to the original recipe, you will also see that 1 1/2 tbs of baking soda are said to be needed. This is a typo. It should be 1 1/2 teaspoons (tsp) not tablespoons (tbs). So I also adjusted and halved that. To give the pies more of a kick, I also added some instant espresso and some chocolate chips for taste and texture.
This recipe makes about 36 whole whoopie pies that are about the size of a baseball.
Adapted from Moody’s Diner featured on Foodnation with Bobby Flay and Food Network Magazine.
Ingredients:
For pies:
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp instant espresso powder
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup veggie oil
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups milk
- 1 cup chocolate chips
For filling:
- 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temp
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and seeds scraped
Possible add-ons if you’re feeling adventurous:
- Crushed vanilla wafer cookies
- Crushed graham crackers
- Crushed Oreos
- Chopped nuts (pecans would probably be best)
- Toasted coconut
- Sprinkles of any sort
- Mini chocolate chips
No, you do not need all of these toppings. I actually just used the vanilla wafer cookies. Use however many or however little you want.
Let us begin.
First, the cakes-
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, or preheat a convection oven to 315 degrees F.
In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and espresso powder).
In a large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar and butter until creamy and fluffy. And eggs and beat until well combined. Add the oil and vanilla and beat again. (I feel like singing Michael Jackson’s “Beat it” because of the number of times I said “beat” in the past sentences)
.Add half of the dry mixture to the egg mixture and beat or stir to blend. Add 3/4 cup milk and beat again. Add the remaining dry mixture and beat until incorporated. Add the remaining 3/4 cup milk and beat until blended. Stir in the chocolate chips
With a spoon, scoop out the batter onto baking sheets. I did about a tablespoon per pie, maybe a little more. With these sized whoopie pies, I was able to get 12 pies on an 11ishx16ish baking sheet. So unless you have a super huge oven and a gazillion baking sheets, you will need to do multiple rotations for baking them. But it’s worth it. Bake for about 6:30-7 minutes, or until a knife stuck in the middle of a pie comes out with moist crumbs attached or clean. Really be careful with the baking time; they go from nice and moist to overbaked and dry in the matter of a minute.
Once out of the oven, let cool slightly on the baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack to cool COMPLETELY before filling
Speaking of filling….
Procedure for vanilla cream-cheese filling
Beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer until smooth. Beat in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla seeds. Sandwich a tablespoonful of filling between 2 cookies; repeat with the remaining cookies and filling. Roll edges in add-ons. Refrigerate 30 minutes before serving.
Enjoy!
pie: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/foodnation-with-bobby-flay/whoopie-pies-recipe/index.html