…Or ‘Whompy pies’ as my little helper calls them! If you’ve got a relatively well stocked baking cupboard, you should always have the ingredients for most of my recipes. Two types of flour (cheapest is fine!), light brown, dark brown and caster sugar, cocoa, baking powder and about four bars of dark chocolate can get you pretty well making most of the recipes. I also keep a vat of cheap sunflower baking spread in the fridge. I promise you, when it comes to everyday, easy bakes, you really don’t need to be spending the earth on ingredients.
You may have seen me make these over on my Instagram stories a couple of weeks back. I decided that baking with my four year old would be a fun thing to do. There was carnage. Flour and cocoa ‘art’ and a lot of ‘mixtures’ with the dregs of ingredients. Good fun though… just wish I had a maid to clear it all up!
You might think that two soft cookies sandwiched together is a bit too much, but the cookies themselves are so light and cakey, that sandwiched together with buttercream, it is simply a fluffy delight. It’s like the tops of two cupcakes squidged with a delicious filling. And there’s a range of options for filling – peanut butter, chocolate spread (or both!), buttercream, frosting, ready made marshmallow fluff or a homemade marshmallow filling.
Whoopie Pies
You’ll need two baking sheets lined with baking paper or silicone sheets.
Makes 12
Ingredients
180g baking spread or butter
150g dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
180g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
40g cocoa powder
pinch of salt
150ml milk
Filling
100g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas mark 6.
- Beat the butter and sugar together until it’s nice and light and fluffy.
- Mix in the egg and vanilla extract and combine so it’s all mixed in.
- Mix the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt together in the scale pan or a separate bowl.
- Add half this dry mixture to the wet mix and combine.
- Stir in the milk.
- Add the rest of the dry flour mixture and give it a good mix.
- Here comes the £1 shop bargain ice cream scoop again! Little scoops make the portions even and round, so they bake into nice, even round shapes, rather than mis-matched weird blobs. Unless that’s what you’re going for… which is fine, we’re not entering any competitions here! But the filling stays better with an even shell. Oh, unless you use a ready made marshmallow fluff. That goes everywhere, I recommend only filling the pies you’re about to eat.
- You’ll need to make 24 blobs, as you’ll want 12 pies. This probably means two batches, as I tend to put six on each tray in order to give them space.
- Bake for around 12 minutes, until they’re nicely risen and springy when you gently poke them.
- Remove first batch and cool for a few minutes on the baking trays, before transferring to a cooling rack.
- Pop the second batch in and bake for about 12 minutes again.
- Now on to the filling! I’ve tried many different fillings, and by all means, go to town on your choice! But I’ve settled on a simple buttercream for mine. Easier still is ready made frosting, or a tub of marshmallow fluff. Fluff, as mentioned before, does slide about everywhere, so I’d recommend filling them as you eat them! Buttercream is a lot more stable! And you can flavour it as you wish.
- To get a white colour, beat the living daylights out of your butter. At least 5 minutes with your mixer at full speed is a minimum!
- Add the icing sugar and a teaspoon of any flavouring you want to use (but be aware that this may colour the buttercream!) and beat.
- Add a tablespoon of milk and mix. You can always add more milk if it’s too stiff, but I find a single tablespoon is enough.
- Spread on a layer of buttercream to one half and pop another on top.
- Repeat!
- Ta-da! Fluffy, sweet and delicious!
☁️❤️☁️
Recipe adapted from Gorgeous Cakes, Sweet Treats Collection, published by Parragon
