Monday, July 4, 2011

First Trip Down Whoopie Pie Lane

Okay readers, everyone turn to page 108 of Baked Explorations. Today's lesson will be on the classic American dessert - whoopie pies. What's that you say? You don't own your own copy of Baked Explorations yet? You haven't even picked up the Brooklyn Boys' first edition of Baked?! And you have never had a whoopie pie??? *Gasp* Actually wait...I've never had a whoopie pie either. I'm not sure how you can go around calling something a classic American dessert when I doubt many Minnesotans have ever had one let alone made their own from scratch. I definitely think they are more of a fad with foodies right now than a timeless classic. Between their two books Matt and Renato actually have three versions - Pumpkin with Cream Cheese, Chocolate, and Red Velvet. Oh and within the Chocolate recipe they have a variation on the filling for peanut butter. There must be something to these little pie/cookie/cake wonders so I decided to start with the basic chocolate and see how I liked it. After tasting an extra half with some Swiss Vanilla Filling I have already reached a conclusion - I think I'm going to open my very own Whoopie Pie Shoppe! ;)

Chocolate "cookie" halves with blobs of cream filling

These took a while to put together so I'm glad I had all afternoon to spend on them.  Maybe I should take every Monday off to test out new recipes...I'm sure I could get a lot of my coworkers to back that idea.  First you have to mix up the dough/batter for the cookie/cake halves.  The recipe calls for 1/2 cup hot coffee and I found out when making cupcakes a while ago that my taste for flavored coffee actually comes in quite handy in this situation.  I brewed up a fresh pot of White Chocolate Obsession and I think it really adds to the depth of flavor.



After plopping on big blobs of cream I smoothed them out with my handy dandy little spatula.  Then I smooshed down the tops and wrapped up each one.  Matt (or Renato) says this recipe yields 10-17 pies depending if you go with the large Pennsylvania Dutch size or the smaller normal person size.  As I was scooping the batter onto my baking sheets I thought I had a lot - three sheets of 6 and another of 3, that's 21!  And then it hit me...that's 21 *halves*...apparently I went for Pennsylvania Large.  But that's okay with me.

I wonder if I can convince my coworkers to cut them in half tomorrow and spread the Whoopie Pie Love...

I also wonder if Baked #3 will have a boozy version of these delicious little pies or if I'm going to have to come up with one on my own?

2 comments:

Leah said...

These look sooooo good! I am anxious to try making whoopie pies. Is the filling you used really sweet?

Amanda said...

Yeah it's called Swiss Vanilla Filling and it's super sweet...2 cups of butter :) I loved it though!