Whoopie!

I was born in New York, but we moved away when I was two years old. For as long as I can remember, we've lived far away from our extended family during the holidays. When we were younger, our aunts and uncles used to send gifts and they would arrive a few days before Christmas. My mom used to let us pick one present to open each day while my dad was at work (he is a lunatic about not opening presents one single second early).

When a present arrived for me this year from my godmother, I apparently still thought those rules applied, and I opened it right away! I'm super glad I did - because what a fun present! She sent a whoopie pie pan, and a cute recipe book for different whoopie pie flavors.

If you've ever had a whoopie pie, they're sort of like cupcakes that are way easier to eat.  They're supposed to look like this:

             

There's no limit to the different cakes and fillings you can use, which makes them extra fun. My book club came over last weekend for a Christmas book exchange / potluck, and I decided to make them my whoopie pie guinea pigs. Funny enough, almost everyone brought a recipe they had never made before (and they were all delicious).

I made red velvet cakes with buttercream icing. Nothing too fancy. Apologies now for my lack of food photography skills.

The batter is definitely more cake like than cookie like.

These first scoops turned out to be too big. If I had them to do over again, I would do about half as much batter in each one. The pan looks like a shallow mini-muffin pan.

You're supposed to brush the bottom of the pan with butter, but of course I didn't, so mine stuck. The nice thing is that it doesn't really matter, since they become a sandwich. I slapped some icing on those bad boys and turned them into cute little sandwiches.

They got good reviews and were pretty easy to make. Because the cakes are so tiny, they only have to bake for about 8 minutes. Apparently you can make them without my fancy pan, but that sounds overwhelming for this non-baker.

Have you ever made or eaten whoopie pies? What flavor combinations can you dream up? I think my next batch will be salted caramel filling on a chocolate cake... yum!