Whoopie!

The cookbook I can't stop flicking through at the moment is Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet. It's a book about baking so it has everything from breads to pastries to cakes and biscuits. Almost every recipe sounds delicious and I want to try it, so I'm slowly working my way through it. His bread recipes have featured on this blog before actually, because they are always brilliant. He has a non-standard approach for kneading bread dough which I love, but more about that another day. Today while my other half patiently slogged away finishing the kick-boards for the kitchen units (the bits that hide the legs on the units and block the gaps that the cat can hide under!), I consulted Dan's book and decided I had the appropriate ingredients to make Whoopie Pies. You heard me; Whoopie Pies. Now, these had a brief moment in food fashion's sun about 2 years ago (before they faded under the Cupcake's unrelenting glow), but I am woefully unfashionable in all respects, so I've never made them before (nor eaten them). They're pretty much small chewy cakes that are sandwiched together with marshmallow cream (which does sound pretty disgusting, I will grant you). You can make all kinds of flavours - I didn't have chocolate in the house, so I made one batch of vanilla, and another called "Raspberry Ruffle" (which is just the vanilla mixture with coconut added and then raspberry jam added to the filling). You can ice them, but I thought they were sweet enough without additional layers of sugar, so mine just have a light dusting of icing sugar.

The vanilla ones worked really well I think, but I went off-book in the raspberry ones and added some jam to the batter as well. That made them too runny and so my raspberry ruffle whoopie pies don't have the same cute button shape as the vanilla. They taste good though.

And hey, I'm improving on the photography too (I mean, I'm not going to be winning awards anytime soon, but it's definitely better than some pics I've taken recently!)! I'll take that as a win!

I should have put something in this to show the size - they're just about a perfect mouthful