It's Whoop-si-Daisy Time! (Yet Another Baking Rabbit Hole)

(Originally posted on WP 11/13/21.)

We moved from NY to MA 10 years ago, making us New Englanders, yet I've never bought or made an apparently well-known New England treat – whoopie pies! What can I say, I've lived a sheltered life. Actually, we just never dine out. In the past 10 years, we've only been to 4 restaurants, and only like two:  Scargo Cafe in Dennis and The Wicked Oyster in
Welfleet.

As I no longer want to/can afford to spend 6 months of every year making (usually knitting) Christmas gifts in my spare time (yes, it really takes that long!), I tend to opt for baking gifts.  But I don't like to repeat myself, at least not too often.  So, I recently went
searching for some new ideas to consider.

What came to mind was the Two Fat Cats Bakery in Portland, Maine, featured in PBS's 'A Few Good Pie Places'.  I remembered their whoopie pies.

I thought, OK, this is different, not a cookie, not strictly a cake, and should definitely be easier than the 12+ Martha Stewart Christmas Stollen I made one year, from her 1989 'Christmas' book. What a workout those puppies were to mix by hand! Not the least because (to save some time) I mixed several at once in my largest SS bowl.

The Initial Research
I always first consider just buying baked treats or food items and having them shipped, because, let's face it, I'm not superwoman any more, and being exhausted from before Thanksgiving until after the taxes are finally done in February is just too much for me. I would ike my winters to finally be the restful, unstressed, good-sleeping, recuperative seasons I need them to be. Well, that's the idea, anyway.

I have done this with citrus (had it shipped from Florida), but most other food gifts cost too much – manageable if one has a small extended family, not so much as the family and friend count climbs.

So, I found and saved at least 10 whoopie pie recipes, noting that some used buttercream fillings, while others used marshmallow fluff fillings, and others yet used a cream cheese filling. So, of course, I had to go looking for buttercream and marshmallow recipes, as well, because buying jars of marshmallow fluff made with gmo high fructose corn syrup isn't my idea of showing love to my family.  

So, as I fell further down the rabbit hole, I went searching for alternatives to corn syrup, which is necessary in order to make fluff, and found these two options:

Organic Lite Corn Syrup and Lyle's Golden Syrup also available on Amazon, at a much higher price.

Ufda.

But it's not until one delves into all the variables can one see the best route towards the end product.  Am crossing off the marshmallow creme filling, and will focus on the much easier buttercream fillings.

The cream cheese filling idea makes me a *bit* nervous. It was used for he oatmeal whoopies. It should be fine though, as I've made rugelach a few times and shipped them, and they use quite a bit of cream cheese.

But that's just the ingredients and recipes. I also then tend to research the best way to produce said foodie item en masse, as well as wrap and safely ship them.

There's actually a Whoopie Pie Pan (who knew!) also called a Muffin Top Pan (not to be confused with that other cause for consternation), or this silicone job.

But I also noted that some recipes simply use a medium-size cookie scoop. Yay, I actually have this in my kitchen gadget drawer!

Last item to consider if using the cookie scoop is  A) parchment paper or B) silicone pan liners.

I have the former, but only one of the latter and it's small, it doesn't fit the larger 11" x 17" baking trays I have.

When making lots of something, I like to have a 2nd pan ready to pop into the oven when the first pan comes out, but they're $25 for 2 liners, eh, I'll stick with the $2 rolls of parchment from the Dollar Store.  Have too many more important things to spend the $ on.

The Test Batch
I figured a half batch of Whoops would be plenty - about 7-8.

I rarely eat cake or cookies, much preferring a few spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream in the evening, but hubby likes a cakey nibble with his early evening coffee, and he has friends more than willing to try out my baking, but it may still take some time to gather feedback and hopefully have a consensus on the Whoopiest Whoopies!

The test batch used this recipe.

Which I had to adjust *of course*.  I don’t usually have brown sugar around, but do have molasses, which I mix into white sugar. And the 1/2 batch would then only need 1/2 a large egg - yeah right, so a whole egg went into the 1/2 batch.

The other change was that when. i printed the recipe, the pdf somehow didn’t show the oven temp instruction, which turns out to be 400” - much hotter than I would bake any cake.  I had set the oven to 355”, so instead of taking 9-10 minutes, they took 11.5 minutes, and I could have baked them longer, but the little cakes came out nice and moist. I will try again, baking at 400” and see what difference it makes.

This was also my first time making buttercream.  When I bake coffee cakes, I don’t frost them – who needs all that extra sugar? But this is a treat. One thing’s for sure, now that I’ve made buttercream, which is SO easy to do, I’ll never buy those small containers of frosting again, as they totally underwhelm me.

I medium scooped the first 11 whoopies, filling tray 1. I also never used a scoop     to scoop batter, but then, I’ve never made any small baked items that weren’t enclosed in a small or medium muffin pan.  Scooping doesn’t clean out a mixing bowl as neatly as using a tablespoon or spoonula – it just can’t, because of its bowl shape.

This irritated me, as I need things to be neat and orderly, and NOT wasteful, so I spooned heaping tablespoons of the batter for the last 4, on the right in the photo, cleaning out the bowl.  They’re fine, just not as perfect as the scooped cakes.

Because these puppies are moist, after cooling and filling, I put them onto a piece of parchment on a dinner plate, so they wouldn’t stick to the plate, and put one whoopie pie out for hubby along with his evening coffee things. (I need to do all these little things for him, as it’s been difficult for him to reach things in the cupboards and fridge.)

I later noticed the dinner plate was looking distinctly light. Hmm. Yup, he liked them and ate two!

As I try out the remaining whoopie pie recipes, I’ll likely just make the little cakes, and save all the buttercream-making for if I decide to make them for the holidays.  Am scoping out sources for little waxed paper bags to pop each one into, just in case.

Onward,
Dawn