Friday 4 November 2011

Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies

I haven't made any Whoopie pies for a while now and wanted something chocolatey, as again it has been some time since I made anything with that in it too. These were made last weekend on the Saturday 29th, followed by the plan to make the Mini Strawberry daiquiri cupcakes the next day.

Eggs ans sugar are the starting point in this recipe. Once fluffy the plain yoghurt, milk and vanilla essence is mixed in a jug and then added to the eggs and sugar until combined. The butter for the whoopie pies is melted before it is added in then come the dry ingredients. The usual flour, bicarb and baking powder are sifted together and then added in two batched to the wet mixture. This is where my electric whisk struggles to get through the dense mixture even when on high. Got there in the end, with a little gentle encouragement on my part, and the chocolate chips are the last to be hand stirred in.

I had a dilemma this week in that my local Tesco has not only decided to move all there shelves around, so annoying as taken me ages to work out where they have decided to put things..obviously cereal is now next to the squash and juices aisle., but they have decided to stop stocking chocolate chips of any variety! Something that comes into baking fairly frequently, I could understand if they had cut down to just the dark chocolate chips and abolished the white and milk to the underworld, but ALL of them it just madness. Frustrated I resigned myself to picking some up at my local Sainsburys later on and continued on my way. Should have just ditched the whole cart then and there in protest but alas we need food to survive. I did eventually get my own back when my one year old daughter dropped the packet of pasta from the trolley and it promptly split as it hit and floor and went flying everywhere..Muahahahaha!! If only I didn't then go and alert someone of the Tesco employment status to the said mess. Ah well, battle won, war lost on that one.

Back to the baking, and away from my possible mutiny of Tesco and all its stores, as I got to the chocolayte chip part of the recipe I remembered I had indeed forgotten to go and buy more supplies from said Sainsburys and so had to forage in the cupboard and hoped there was enough chips in there to cover the mishap. Luckily there was, but there were a leftover mix of white, milk and dark so my whoopie pies ended up as triple chocolate chip in the end.

The batter now mixed went to chill in the fridge and have a catch up with the milk and butter for 30 minutes. I lined the two trays with greaseproof paper and set the oven to 170 then chilled out myself for a bit. Once it was firm enough, the wedding rings came off and I set around trying to get the right sided mounds. Again I was over zealous with my portions and only ended up making 7 whoopie pies in total, 14 halves to be exact. I always make them a little on the large side but they, no harm in having to cut a whoopie pie in half just to try and eat it all.

Baked in the oven for 15 minutes until golden brown and springy and then out to cool on the worktop they went. I cracked straight on and made up the filling, mixing the butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar together before adding the marshmallow fluff. Again I admit I didn't measure it out again and just used a whole jar plus a tablespoonful from a second. It is too sticky for me to be messing around with and I get it everywhere as it is without the need to measure it out. Later found a bit stuck to my foreman by my elbow, dunno how it reached up there.

This filling also needs to be chilled to firm up a bit so went into the fridge for 30 minutes whilst the pies still calmed down themselves. Before the filling was ready I peeled the pie halves off the trays and matched them up as best I could on their size so that we didn't end up with frosting spill out of one half over the other.

This time I actually slopped it on in a frenzy and used up all my icing bar a palette knife full at the end for me to eat neat. They looked great, not quite like the picture as my chips were tricoloured and seemed to be hidden mostly in the sponge but otherwise I dug straight in. I did have to cut it in half as it was too big to try and hold as one and eat but it was totally worth the effort. I love whoopie pies and these were no exception. My favourite still has to be the red velvet and the chocolate ones but these have a nice twist with the chocolate flavoured fluff in the middle too. Yummy. I would make whoopies much more often but they are not something you can knock together quickly like cupcakes due to all the chilling involved. Such a shame..if only Hummingbird extended their delivered to Surrey, I would be in big trouble and they would be rich.



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