Whoopie Pies

Whoopie pies are very much like cupcakes, similar mix but made like biscuits so have a much better cake to frosting ratio and give much more scope for playing with flavours.

I'll give the recipe for the chocolate pies first, then a variation for red velvet and then some frosting ideas :)

Chocolate whoopie pies

115g unsalted butter

200g brown sugar

1 egg

5ml vanilla extract

225ml buttermilk (sainbury's or waitrose or big tescos for this one)

60g cocoa powder

5g bicarbonate of soda

190g plain flour

Preheat oven to 200 degrees (gas mark 6) and cover 3 large baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together and then add the egg.

In a seperate jug add the vanilla essence to the buttermilk.

In another bowl (lots of washing up!) sift the flour, cocoa powder, soda and flour together. Then add half this mix to the creamed butter mix followed by half the buttermilk. Fold in the rest of the flour then the rest of the buttermilk, do not over mix.

Either spoon the batter onto the baking sheet to make disks about 4-5cm across (leave plenty of space between), or put the batter in a piping bag and pipe rounds about 4-5cm across. I can normally make about 42 rounds out of one set of batter. Bake in oven for 10-12 mins until it forms a hard crust on top.

Red Velvet whoopie pies

Use the same measurements as for the chocolate ones except for the following:

200ml buttermilk

2 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp red food colouring

Mix the food colouring with the buttermilk and vanilla in the steps above.

Frostings

I fill chocolate pies with chocolate frosting, and red velvet pies with strawberry or raspberry marshmallow frosting.

Vanilla

250g icing sugar

80g unsalted butter, soft

25ml whole milk

couple of drops of vanilla extract

Chocolate

300g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter, soft

40g cocoa powder

40ml whole milk

Cream cheese (great with red velvet)

300g icing sugar

50g unsalted butter

125g cream cheese

Marshmallow

250g icing sugar

80g unsalted butter

25ml whole milk

1 jar plain, raspberry or strawberry marshmallow fluff (can get at TK Maxx bizarrely enough or Selfridges)

Beat together the icing sugar and butter with cocoa powder if using on a slow speed in an electric mixer. Add milk slowly and cream cheese or marshmallow and mix until incorporated, then beat on high speed for 5 minutes until it is light and fluffy.

Pipe or spread frosting on one side of the whoopie pie and sandwich with another similar sized cake.

To top the pies for the chocolate ones I use nutella, and for the red velvet ones I make up strawberry icing, then decorate with various sugary treats :)

Print this post