The Whisk Is Mightier Than The Sword: Chocolate Whoopie Pies

To me, whoopie pies are a kind of inside out cupcake. Less cakey biscuit on the outside and a big splodge of frosting on the inside. Let's face it, the frosting is the best bit of any cake and a whoopie pie gives you so much more of it! Right, that’s sold 'em!

My first attempt at whoopie pies was an effort to recreate these bad boys,

Elvis Whoopie Pies

While the 'nana cake was delicious, wonderfully moist and yummy, the honey frosting was kinda lost in amongst the other flavours. I did intend to fiddle with the recipe and see if the honey frosting could be brought more into the forefront but circumstances prevented and so I decided that I would attempt a chocolate whoopie pie

The original plan was to try and create a black forest whoopie pie. I figured that I could make chocolate whoopies, add vanilla frosting around the outside of the cake to make a kinda 'pool' for some kind of cherry jam/sauce to sit in. Then I would either sprinkle the frosting and cherry filling with dark chocolate bits before squishing the two halves together or possibly create a chocolate glaze for the tops of the whoopie pies. In reality I was too lazy to go to the shops and buy the extra ingredients! And so just plain chocolate whoopies it was! The black forest whoopies will be on my list of things to make though! So watch this space!

So, on with chocolate whoopies! The original recipe is from here but I've copied it below. My notes are in blue.

Classic Chocolate Whoopie Pies

1 2/3 cups (1/2 c and 1/4 c) all-purpose (plain for uk'ers) flour

2/3 cup (1/3 c) cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp (3/4 tsp) baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

1/2 tsp (1/4 tsp) salt

4 tbsp (2 tbsp/ 1 oz) unsalted butter (salted, I always use salted butter!)

4 tbsp (2 tbsp/ 1 oz) vegetable shortening

1 cup (1/2 c) brown sugar

1 large (half a beaten) egg

1 tsp (1/2) tsp vanilla extract

1 cup (1/2 c) milk

Makes about 12 whoopie pies (I halved the recipe and got 6).

A quick note about the shortening! I was under the impression that shortening was an American ingredient and that it didn’t really have a substitute in the UK but after a quick google and an even longer, much more expensive trip to Tesco, I found this,

Which, as far as I’m concerned is the closest thing to shortening we have here so this is my first recipe testing it! On a totally unrelated note, my Irish bf informs me that the suffix –een means little in Irish so little cook shortening it is!

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F) (Gas 5) and have all ingredients at room temperature. Lay out your parchment paper (Having run out of parchment paper and being too lazy to go to the shops, I used foil but greased with butter and cooking oil spray really well) on your baking trays (I used two trays).
2. Using your mixer, beat the butter, shortening, and sugar together.

3. Add in the egg and vanilla extract.

4. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

5. Add half of the dry mixture and half of the milk to the wet ingredients. Mix until combined.
6. Add in the remaining half of the dry mixture and the milk. Mix until completely combined.

7. Using a spoon or ice cream scoop, drop 1 (mini) or 2 (medium-large, what I made) tablespoons of the batter onto your parchment paper. Remember to evenly space the batter. I was able to fit twelve of the 2 tablespoons on one tray. (I used 2 trays and got 6 scoops on each tray, none of the scoops spread).

8. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cakes spring back when lightly tapped. Remove from the oven and let cool on the tray for 10-15 minutes.

9. Gently remove the cakes from the parchment paper and allow to cool.
10. Make your favourite frosting to fill the whoopie pies!

B
I was quite disappointed that the whoopies cracked on top. I kinda prefer a smooth top. I do wonder if the shortening had something to do with it or maybe it was my impatience or the fact that I probably slightly overcooked them!

To frost the whoopies, I just made up a frosting as I went along! Any frosting’ll work but I decided to go with just buttercream made with butter and shortening. No real recipe here. Instead I just added a blob of butter and a blob of shortening, creamed them together until they were smooth and well combined,

then just added icing sugar until I couldn’t taste the fat. I do this partly cos I’m lazy and partly cos I enjoy tasting frosting! Once all the icing sugar is combined and the frosting is smooth, its ready! If its too thick, add milk. And too thin, add more icing sugar. I kinda hit on what I thought would be a really clever shortcut idea for flavouring the frosting and added a good glug of some coffee syrups that were a totally random xmas present!

I went with caramel and I must have added a good half the bottle but I think the flavour got somewhat lost and while it seemed a smart move, it isn’t something that I’d repeat! Save them for hot chocolate I think! After that I decided that the frosting’d be much more interesting if I coloured it. So it started blue and ended up purple! I use gel colouring and a little goes a long way. So after all my fiddling I ended up with a bowl of finished frosting.

I was planning on piping it onto the whoopies but had serious fears for the whiteness of my piping bag with all that colouring so I decided that a scoop of frosting would be more equipment friendly!