What the Whoopie?

A whoopie pie or whoopie cookie is a cookie made from two cake like layers with icing in between. There are recipes on the Internet; not too hard to find. The ones my mother made when I was growing up had an icing of marshmellow cream and confectioners sugar inside cookie halves that were essentially cake batter dropped onto a cookie pan.

whoopie pies are the traditional child pacifying treat given to AMish kids. They are a really baaad double layer of dense devils food cake with a layer of confectioners sugar and lard icing in the middle. The lard is just to hold the sugar together. A whoopie cookie is the same lardn sugar sammich except with two snickerdoodle cookies .
This stuff'l kill ya.

Thank you chaps for your advice, I'm trying to get my head around using lard in an icing - but the thought is making me feel ill. I used to use lard in my savoury shortcrust pastry (half lard/half butter) but nowadays use vegetable shortening. It seems that you have an amazing array of different types of baked things in the states. Over here we have cakes and biscuits, thats pretty much it. Since the advent of the taking over the world coffee franchise there are now brownies & cookies but we don't have anywhere near the diverse selection that you have.

You don't have to use lard. My recipe uses marshmellow cream, conf. sugar and butter.

America's Test Kitchen has one of the best recipes. I no longer have access to it on their website but found a couple of food blogs that have the recipe as well as their impressions of the results. Let me know if you can't access either of them and I'll copy it here for you.

http://savorynotebook.blogspot.com/2005/09/chewy-fudgy-triple-chocolate-brownies.html

http://matke.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/chewy-fudgy-triple-chocolate-brownies-page/

I always thought Whoopie Pies had a marshmallow filling, too.

Now those are whoopidy pies. ( Butterflynet was posting brownies). An AMish whoopidy pie is a little yellowish in the filling (probably because iots using the lard method or maybe butter).
I never liked anyway but the AMISH kids eat em like theyre dying from hunger. Greasy, sweet, cakey . Blesccchhh

farmer, I remember you saying the amish eats tons of sugar, and in the most unexpected things.

Here's a Whoopie Pie version that replaces the lard with butter and cream cheese.



Cookies:
2 tbsp butter softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups Original Bisquick baking mix
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2 tsp red food colour

Filling:
4 oz (125g) cream cheese softened
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar (icing sugar)

1. heat oven to 350F, line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats (or grease with cooking spray)

2. In medium bowl, beat 2 tbsp of butter and the granulated sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add remaining cookie ingredients and beat until well combined.
Drop by tablespoonfuls of dough onto cookie sheet, leaving 2 inches in between them. I ended up with 14 cookies (7 pies) but if you make them with a tablespoon sized measure you should get 28 cookies (14 pies)

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool completely.

4. Combine the cream cheese with the 1/4 cup of butter and beat together, add the remaining filling ingredients and beat well until smooth and creamy.

5. For each whoopie pie, spread 1 generous dollop of filling on the bottom of 1 cookie and place a second cookie, bottom side down, on filling.
Store in refrigerator.

Here's one that uses cream cheese and marshmallows for the Whoopie filling:

Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese Marshmallow Filling

* 1 1/4 cup(s) of all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup(s) of unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1 tsp. of baking soda
* 1/4 tsp. of baking powder
* 1/4 tsp. of salt
* 1 cup(s) of sugar
* 1/2 cup(s) of unsalted butter, softened, cut into pieces
* 1 egg
* 6 ounce(s) of Philadelphia Neufchatel (or Philadelphia Cream Cheese)
* 6 large marshmallows
* 1/4 cup(s) of unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup(s) of sifted confectioner’s sugar
* 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or spray with cooking spray.
2. For the cookies, combine the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a food processor. Pulse to combine. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can use an electric mixer.)
3. Add the ½ cup of butter and egg. Pulse to combine until it is no longer crumbly and forms a dough.
4. Put the dough in a bowl and knead it with your fingers.
5. Take about 2 tablespoons of dough, roll it into a ball with your hands, and place it on the cookie sheet. (You should have 24 balls of dough, to make 12 Whoopie Pies).
6. Flatten the balls of dough.
7. Bake in the oven for 9 minutes, rotating the baking sheets once.
8. After baking, let cookies sit on cookie sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.
9. For the frosting, microwave marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of the butter for 30-50 seconds.
10. Combine Neufchatel, marshmallow and butter mixture, and remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in a mixing bowl. Blend on medium-high until smooth and creamy.
11. Add confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract. Blend on medium-high until smooth and creamy.
12. To frost, use a knife to spread 1 cookie with about 1 tablespoon of icing. Place a second cookie on top of the frosting. Enjoy!

Most anything Ina makes is good, IMO. I overbaked the brownies I made for the Super Bowl, they were dry, so I frosted them. Turned a fumble into a save!

If you ever go to a store that sells AMISH astuff, buy some of their Ketchup. You could put it over pancakes it is that sweet. They also use several shovel fulls of sugar (brown sugar) in their meat dishes with the exception of turkey and chicken.

An AMISH homestyl;e meal is like one big dessert to me.

They work off all those sugar calories. It is what fuels their lifestyle.

In Plain City, Ohio, not far from Columbus, there is an Amish buffet style restaurant. The food is mostly plain old American home cooking, but you have to watch out, because they do put sugar in everything. Their baked ham is a good quality of ham, but it has been soaked in so much honey and sugar that i find it inedible. You don't want to try to eat their Waldorf salad. I used to find their macaroni and cheese (the baked kind) pretty good, but then it started to taste sweet, too, and i suspect they had started to put sugar into it.

Their dessert bar was just as big as the one the entrees and veggies were served from.

I looked up the pret a manger website and they have a lot of recipes for their foods shown.. just not the brownies.
I'll be interested how the Ina Garten ones come out.

You know what's wacky? I never think of looking things up online until after I get myself in a tangle, I'll look for a specific recipe but had never thought of looking to see if Pret had recipes on the web. Duh!

Thanks for all of your input, I also heard of Red Velvet Cake for the first time this week, another one I don't know and I've been given a recipe that mixes the two how cool is that. (Is it a really red sponge?). I'm going to have a go at these whoopies though you do have some ingredients that we just don't have, e.g. marshmallow fluff, corn syrup, but I can wing it.

Thanks again to my new friends, I knew you would rally round.

Slainte

S xx

I agree Irish but you can also add that everything Ina makes is HUGE, I'd love to know who eats it all now she isn't cooking for the shop. I mean a normal family can hardly run to starting every recipe with a pound of butter, I have made sone of her muffin recipes and they were nice, I had enough to last me a month in the freezer. Somehow I think the brownies will be easy to dispose of though.

I had a look at a few Amish sites after your reply Farmer, and there were hundreds of recipes, I did notice though that there were an awful lot of convenience foods in them. Cans of soup, mushrooms, cola. I had a totally erroneous idea that the Amish led a very back to basics way of life, I expected fresh food, but you're right they do love their sugar.

If you can find the corn syrup, here's a recipe for making your own marshmallow fluff:

http://www.grouprecipes.com/58165/home-made-marshmallow-fluff.html