Pumpkin-Vanilla & Chocolate-Mint Whoopie Pies!

It was my 2nd Friday off from the restaurant so I thought about testing whoopie pies recipes.  My love of whoopie pies started when I tried one 2 years ago, it was rather bland, but I loved the fun shape it had, then I tried the ones Whole Foods sells and it was OK.

While working at Treet with the sweet Jenna from Whisked DC, I discovered whoopie pies could be fun to make and delicious to taste, and now I prefer them to cupcakes, even Macaroons, I’m a simple girl as you can see.

The restaurant will be having a Pumpkin dinner, Halloween is very close, and there are pumpkins everywhere that you go in town so I chose pumpkin to be the first whoopie pie that I wanted to make, my other favorite Mint-Chocolate brings me memories of the Thin Mints cookies that are sold by the Girl Scouts.

For the Pumpkin Whoopie I went organic, including the butter as you can see, something about the whole Icelandic milk rave got my attention, so I paid almost $4 for less than 300g of butter, fine.  I got the Pumpkins at Whole Foods a Kabocha Delica (the green one), and what I believe is a Kabocha Gold Debut (the orange one).

Sliced them, removed seeds, and roasted them in the oven for around 45 minutes.

I loved this butter!

While that process I worked on 2 different Frostings for each Whoopie Pie, for the chocolate I made Vanilla-Chocolate and Mint-Vanilla, for the pumpkin I made Pumpkin-Vanilla and Cream Cheese.

These are the links that I used as reference, (Martha Stewart) for the Pumpkin and for the Chocolate Whoopie I used as a reference, the recipe from the Mad about Muffins Cookbook. I made a few changes on each recipe, on the Martha Stewart I roasted my Pumpkins instead of using the canned version, used everything organic, reduced the sugar, and used butter instead of oil.

I used Media Crema for the Chocolate (to add extra richness, but the next time I will try buttermilk or sour cream) and melted Ghirardelli Chocolate Semi-Sweet, lowered the amount of sugar in the recipe. On the cream cheese Frosting I used Neufchatel and also Cream Cheese and it worked perfectly.

I always reduce the amount of sugar I read on recipes because sometimes it is just too much, I did that with all of these frosting recipes.

The boy loved all of them except for Mint-Chocolate he can’t stand anything mint, a shame I know.

I brought samples of the Whoops to my sister-in-law house and enjoyed them with coffee, though I prefer a good old glass of  cold milk.

I also brought slices of my Potato Rosemary bread; I’ll share that story on the next post.

At the end these Whoops are fun to make and very simple, be creative don’t go over budget and make seasonal whoopie pies!

¡a comer!

Recipe for the Chocolate Whoopie Pie (based on Mad about Muffins Cookbook by Dot Vartan)

1/4 cups AP Flour
1 tbl Baking Powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of melted semi-sweet chocolate (or 1/4 cup powdered cocoa)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 stick unsalted butter
1 can of Media Creme Nestle (or 2/3 of milk)

Directions: (everything room temperature)

1.  Pre-heat Oven 350F (line up baking sheets with parchment paper)
2.  Cream sugar & butter, then add egg and keep creaming until well mixed.
3.  Melt chocolate either Double boiling or use the microwave pulsing 30 seconds everytime and stir.
4.  Mix wet ingredients, then in separate bowl the dry ones.
5.  At the end if the batter is too soft, refrigerate for a little while and scoop out with an Ice cream spoon, scoop as many as you can the size that you want.
6.  Bake 4-8 minutes (depending on the size of your scoop) then rotate halfway and bake until you press in the middle and the whoopie will hold its shape slightly.
7.  Let them cool before frosting them and putting together as sandwich.

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Frostings

1 stick of unsalted butter (room temperature), whip with powdered sugar, touch of milk, taste and taste, add pinch of salt, tsp of vanilla extract and mint extract and taste and depending on your palate adjust sugar, (before adding mint extract separate by half if you want to make a Chocolate Icing).

For the Chocolate just add melted chocolate, some milk so it is softer at the end.

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NOTE: I will add nuts and more things the next time it will add interesting texture to the whoopie, for a kid something similar with choco-chips.