Yesterday afternoon, I decided to put some of my recent purchases from Cambridge to good use and make The Humming Bird Bakery’s chocolate whoopie pies from the ‘Cake Days’ cookbook.
I have never eaten a whoopie pie before, let alone made one, so was really intrigued as to how they would turn out!
Chocolate Whoopie Pies
Makes 6 – 10
1 egg
150g Caster Sugar
125g Plain yoghurt
25ml milk
¼ tsp vanilla essence
75g melted stork
200g Plain Flour
80g Cocoa Powder
¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp baking powder
Filling:
170g Stork
280g icing sugar
220g marshmallow fluff
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Mix together the egg and sugar until fluffy.
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Mix together the milk, yogurt and vanilla essence in a jug and add to the egg mixture.
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Add the melted Stork and mix thoroughly.
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Sift the dry ingredients together then add to the creamed mixture. Mix well.
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Place the batter in the fridge for 30 minutes.
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Heat the oven to 170 degrees
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Grease a whoopie pie tin. Take a spoonful of batter and roll in your hands. Push down in one of the wells in the tin. Repeat until the tin is full.
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Bake for 10 – 13 minutes or until the spring back when touched. You may need to bake more than one batch to use all the batter.
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Remove tray from oven. After 10 minutes, remove the whoopie pie segments to a wire rack. These need to be completely cooled before adding the filling.
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Mix together butter and icing sugar. Once fully incorporated, add the marshmallow fluff and mix well. Place in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes to firm up.
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To assemble, take one sponge and spread a tablespoon of filling on one flat side. Stick another sponge flat side down to make a sandwich. Continue until all the sponges and filling is used up.
I made a few adjustments to the recipe. For example, I used low-fat alternatives where possible (e.g. low-fat yogurt, milk etc) and although this makes the pies far from low fat, I think it is important to use healthier alternatives when you can if it does not compromise the finished product. I also used a whoopie pie tin which was not called for in the book. This perhaps made my sponges a little smaller in diameter but I thought using a whoopie pie tin would better ensure the sponges didn’t stick together and were roughly the same size.
The marshmallow fluff isn’t that easy to buy as it is an American product. I located mine in a sweet shop in Cambridge but I know that Selfridges stock it also. A little pricey, as the entire jar is used in the recipe, but I have seen blogs out there that give recipes on how to make your own faux marshmallow fluff. I am sure it would be just as good!
The main difficulty I had was making the ‘lids’ of the pies stay on! So much so that after sandwiching the pies together, I put them in a box in the fridge to firm up!
The last rather mangled whoopie pie
I was not disappointed in my first whoopie pie experience – utterly delicious! ‘Cake Days’ features many different recipes for whoopie pies from carrot cake to peanut butter and chocolate so buy yourself a copy and experiment!
What would your favourite flavour of whoopie pie be?
