Red Velvet Whoopie Pies - They're Not Just For Valentines Day!

So, the last few weeks have been pretty crazy for me, which once again has resulted in a lack of posts.  Eeek!  Even though I can't post, it doesn't mean I've stopped baking!  And once again our computer stopped working.  The hard drive basically died, which meant I was without a computer for an entire week - all my baking pictures were on it, so there wasn't much I could do.  Luckily we've got it repaired which will tied me over until get my brand new Mac Book Pro in a week or so!!!   

 So, as you can probably tell by some of the sprinkles I used, I had intended for these Red Velvet Whoopie Pies to be up in time for Valentines Day - which obviously didn't happen.  Now, I do know that Red Velvet Whoopie Pies were extremely popular this Valentines day, so perhaps a lot of you got a bit sick of seeing one Red Velvet Whoopie Pie after another.  Hopefully you've all had a break from them, and won't moan and groan when you see these! 

I'd wanted to make Red Velvet Whoopie Pies for ages, and since Red Velvet cupcakes are my husbands absolute favourite, I thought it would be quite fitting I make him these for Valentines Day.  This recipe made about 18 whoopie pies, and we froze some since we couldn't eat them all at once.  It's now 2 weeks later, and my husband is still sneaking these from the freezer and they taste exactly the same as the day I made them. 

The original recipe (from Better Homes and Gardens) called for a basic cream cheese frosting filling, but I wanted to try my hand at doing a traditional marshmallow fluff filling with a cream cheese twist.  These whoopie pies looked beautiful with their bright and vibrant red colour.  Normally in the UK I think their red colour may have scared off a lot of people - especially parents, as food colourings are commonly frowned upon here.  It's very hard to find any kind of vibrantly coloured decorating sprinkles or sugars here, as most of them are made with natural colourings and as a result their colours are very muted and bland.  Because of this I end up buying most of my sprinkles in North America whenever I get the chance to go back.  Even the smarties here (FYI: they don't have chocolate smarties in the US, but they're very similar to M&M's) are now made with natural colourings, and as a result not only are they far less vibrant than the Canadian smarties, but the UK ones also taste different!  The yellow smarties taste a like lemon, and the orange ones of orange.  I really don't like them because they all taste a bit fruity due to their natural colourings. Basically, I'm a fan of the saying "everything in moderation".  One or two of these bright red whoopie pies isn't going to kill you, and I don't think they'll make your kids go crazy either, but if you're not a fan of the added food colouring, then feel free to leave it out.  The whoopie pies will taste exactly the same - bright red or not. 

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

2 Cups (250g) Flour (plain/all purpose)
2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 Cup (114g) Butter, softened
1 Cup (200g) Packed Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 Cup (125ml) Buttermilk
2 1/2 Tbsp Liquid Red Food Coloring  

1. Preheat oven to 375°F (175°C). Lightly grease 2 baking sheets, or line with parchment paper and set aside. In medium bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. 

2. In large mixing bowl beat the butter on high speed for 30 seconds. Add in brown sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the food colouring and buttermilk  together in a measuring cup.  Alternating between the buttermilk mixture and the flour mixture, add in each to the brown sugar and egg mixture, making sure to beat after each addition until just combined.  

3. Pour your batter into a piping bag and pipe your whoopie pies onto your cookie sheets.  You can also spoon the batter in 1- or 2-inch rounds, about 1/2-inch high on prepared baking sheets, allowing 1.5 inches between each round. 

4. Bake 7 to 9 minutes for 1-inch cookies or 9 to 11 minutes for 2-inch cookies, or until tops are set. Cool completely before filling. 

Fluffy Marshmallow Cream Cheese Filling

1/4 Cup Vegetable Shortening, such as Crisco or Trex
1/4 Cup Cream Cheese
2 1/2 Cups (315g) Icing Sugar
1/2 Cup Marshmallow Fluff
1/2 tsp Vanilla 

1. Beat the vegetable shortening on high speed for 30 seconds. Add in marshmallow fluff and vanilla, and beat for another 30 seconds until combined with the shortening. 

2. Gradually beat in the icing sugar until it's all incorporated into the marshmallow fluff mixture.  

3. Fill your whoopie pies using a piping bag or spoon, and sandwich a dollop of filling between 2 whoopie pies.   

* After filling all of my whoopie pies, I found the marshmallow filling to be a tad on the soft side.  I'd suggest you have some extra icing sugar on hand in case you'd like to add in a bit extra in order to make your filling a little more stiff. 

I chose to sprinkle the edges of my whoopie pies with sprinkles.  You can choose whatever type of sprinkles and sanding sugars you like.  Simply hold your whoopie pies over a plastic container (the sprinkles will bounce off of glass!) and shake your sprinkles onto the filling so they stick.  Any unused sprinkles will fall into your container for you to save and use again.

Whoopie! It's a Giveaway!

You may recall that I made my very first whoopie pie a few weeks ago when I tested a recipe for a new cook book that has yet to be released.  I was really impressed with how easy whoopie pies were to make, and wondered why the heck it took me so long to try them!   

Last week I made pumpkin pie, and I've been on a bit of a pumpkin kick ever since.  One of my favourite things to make with pumpkin are my pumpkin spice cupcakes, but this time I decided to forgo my "old faithfuls" in exchange for something new. Pumpkin Whoopie Pies!  I've wanted to make these pumpkin whoopie pies for ages - long before I offered to test the chocolate and vanilla ones, but I just never got around to it.   

These whoopies are really delicious.  They're a bit like carrot cake, but without all those little carroty bits.  Sandwich some cinnamon cream cheese filling in between them, and you've got a match made in heaven. 

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

1½ cups (190g) flour 

½ tsp salt 

½ tsp baking powder 

½ tsp baking soda 

½ tsp vanilla extract 

2 ½ tsp ground cinnamon 

½ tsp ground ginger 

½ tsp ground cloves 

1 cup (220g) packed brown sugar 

½ cup (125ml) vegetable oil 

¾ cup (165g) pumpkin puree 

1 egg 

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling 

½ cup (113g) Cream Cheese  

½ cup (113g) Butter, room temperature 

1½ cups Icing Sugar 

2 tsp vanilla 

1 tsp cinnamon  

Maple syrup or flavouring** (optional) 

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF (175ºC), and lightly grease 2 baking sheets, or line with parchment paper. 

2. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in a bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the oil, vanilla and brown sugar together. Mix in the pumpkin and eggs, and beat until well combined. Add in the flour mixture, and mix until combined.   

3. To form your whoopie pies, drop two teaspoons of batter onto the prepared baking sheets.  Alternatively, you can pour your batter into a piping bag, and pipe 1½ inch circles onto your baking sheets Bake for 10 minutes. Cool. 

4. For the cream cheese filling, beat the butter and cream cheese together until well blended.  Add in the icing sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, and blend until light and fluffy.  If the icing isn't stiff enough, add in a bit more icing sugar until it's thick enough. **I tried several variations with my cream cheese filling.  I split the filling into thirds, and left 1/3 plain, 1/3 cinnamon, and 1/3 maple (I used McCormick brand Maple Flavouring from Canada).  I thought all 3 fillings, were delicious, but I'm a sucker for anything cinnamon, so preferred the cinnamon variation the best. 

5. Spoon or pipe the cream cheese filling onto the bottom of one of the whoopie pies before placing another one on top of the filling to create a small sandwich. Repeat until all of the whoopie pies are complete. 

There ya go.  Pumpkin Whoopie Pies!  Bet ya can't eat just one! 

And now for the best part!!!

Since we're almost half way through the first week of December, I'm assuming most of you have probably started your Christmas shopping by now.  I have.  And while I was out shopping a few weeks ago, I came across another one of these reusable nylon cupcake bags.  I've had this exact bag for ages, and I have to admit it's great for popping into your purse and whipping out at a moments notice to carry home all of your purchases.  And because it's Christmas, and because it's the season for shopping - and giving, I've decided to give away this cute little bag.  To enter for a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment below telling me what you'd put in the bag when you go shopping. Would it be a hat and scarf for mom? A DVD set for your boyfriend? Or toys for your kiddies? You can get extra entries by doing each of the following, and then leave a comment telling me which ones you've done.     

• Become a Follower of Made With Pink using Google Friend Connect  
• Become a Fan of Made With Pink on Facebook 
• Follow me on Twitter, and Tweet the following message: I've just entered to win a Cupcake Fizbag from @Made_With_Pink  http://tiny.cc/h5fi3

Links to all of the above are in the right hand column.  Maximum of 4 entries per person.  Contest open residents world wide. The winning comment will be chosen at random.  

Contest closes at midnight (London, UK time) on Sunday December 12th.

Good Luck!

*** I Just wanted to remind everyone that you MUST leave a comment below in order to be entered into the prize draw, otherwise I have no way of keeping track of who tweeted, followed etc.  If you make a comment anonymously then please leave an email address so I can contact you if you win. You should leave a separate comment for each of the 3 things listed above if you want to be entered more than once.  I will be using random.org to choose a number from all of the comments listed below in order to determine the winner. ***

Recipe Testing Chocolate & Vanilla Whoopie Pies

I recently I came across a really intriguing blog that detailed the daily adventures of a women who decided to follow her dream of writing a cook book.  Vanessa Kimbell quit her job in May 2010, and gave herself a year to write a recipe book and get it on to bookstore shelves.  And it's a book with a very cool concept.  Well, 2 actually.   

Vanessa's book "Prepped" is designed to save time by allowing you to prepare one "base" recipe that you can then go on to use in 2 or more different recipes. For example - you could choose to make a base recipe and use one half for dinner that night, and then take the other half of the recipe and make something completely different to bring to a friend's dinner party the next night. I thought that was pretty cool.  But the other thing that's even cooler is that Vanessa was looking for bloggers to help test her recipes!  I'm sure we've all tried making a recipe from a book before and it just didn't turn out quite right.  I've been hearing a lot of complaints lately about a certain best selling cake book where the recipes were not tested properly and therefore don't turn out as expected.  Well, you won't have to worry about a recipe not turning out with this book, because all of the recipes have been tested over and over by both Vanessa and a selection of eager bloggers who provide feedback on each recipe they test. 

I was lucky enough to test the recipe for Vanessa's Chocolate and Vanilla Whoopie Pies (that's her picture above!).  I'd never made whoopie pies before, so I was really looking forward to trying them.  When I first took a look at the recipe, something really stood out to me - the filling was very simple and made with double cream - not your typical whoopie pie filling which is usually made with shortening, cream cheese or marshmallow fluff.  When I spoke with Vanessa (she's super nice by the way - I feel like I could talk to her for hours!) she told me that she thought the traditional fillings were way to sweet, so she created her own.  I had never tried double cream before so Vanessa was kind enough to educate me in the differences between whipping cream (which is what I usually use) and double cream.  In North America the cream with the highest fat content is whipping cream at 36%, while here in the UK the cream with highest fat content is clotted cream with a whopping 85% fat!  Double cream has a 48% fat content, which as Vanessa explained to me is a dryer cream than whipped cream so it will hold it's shape better and won't run or melt.  It's almost like the stabilized whipped cream we would use back home, but without the gelatin stabilizer.  

As it was my first time making whoopie pies, I was really impressed with how easy they were to make.  I tested the "base" whoopie pie recipe, which is designed to work with different fillings that you can make by infusing the cream with various natural flavourings such as orange, lavender or cardamon.  I'd never heard of using cardamon or lavender in a recipe like this before, but I think it's far more common in the UK and parts of Europe than it is back home in North America.

As a tester, I followed the directions exactly as written so that I could provide feedback on the instructions, method and the most important part - the whoopie pies themselves!  I had a few minor bits of feedback for the whoopie pies, but the main one was that I would have preferred them to be a touch sweeter.  Coming from North America, I grew up eating really sweet things and if you're a regular reader of my blog it's probably no surprise that I have a major sweet tooth.  I've mentioned before that we North Americans like our sweet stuff.  We eat waffles with fruit and whipped cream for breakfast while people in the UK  would eat this for dessert and prefer a more savoury breakfast consisting of baked beans, sausages, mushrooms, and eggs.  I've found that a lot of Brit's don't like overly sweet things, so I think these whoopie pies are perhaps more suited to UK taste buds, but they are definitely delicious none the less.  I really liked the lightness of the filling in these.  The double cream was totally different that anything I'd tried before.  It was light and airy without being too sweet and heavy.  I can definitely see me bringing these to a summer BBQ party, and they're sure to be a hit with kids.   

If you're interested in trying Vanessa's Chocolate and Vanilla Whoopie Pies the original recipe I tested is below (I've added a few notes in grey).  As I mentioned before - I did feed back a few comments and suggestions about the whoopie pies, so the final recipe that appears in her book "Prepped" may be a bit different to the one below.  Guess we'll just have to wait and see once the book is released in April. 

 Chocolate & Vanilla Whoopie Pies (I ran out of natural light, hence the dark photos)

Chocolate and Vanilla Whoopie Pies 

Makes 16
Preparation 20 minutes
Cooking 10 minutes  

Whoopie Pie
120g (1/2 cup + 1Tbsp) of butter
200g (just under a cup, so round up to a full cup) of caster sugar
2 medium eggs
280grams of SR (2 1/4 cups Self Raising) flour
4 large heaped tbsp of cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
250ml (1 cup) of buttermilk 

Filling
1 Level teaspoon of vanilla paste
3 tablespoons of icing sugar
300 ml (8.5oz) of double cream 

1. Preheat heat the oven to Gas 4/ 350 F/ 180C 
2. Grease two baking trays. 
3. In a bowl combine the dry ingredients. 
4. In a separate bowl beat the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy and then add the eggs.  Add the dry ingredients and the Buttermilk and combine the ingredients.  You should be left with a relatively stiff mixture ready to spoon onto the baking tray in round bite size blobs.   To get 16 pies you will need 32 of these. 
5. Bake in the oven for 10 – 12 minutes (I baked mine for 10). They are a cross between a biscuit and a sponge (cookie and a cake), however there is a fine line between biscuit and burnt because of the high sugar content, so don’t leave them in too long.  I found a much better bite to them if I left them in the oven to cool, but if you haven’t time transfer cool on a wire rack. 
6. Add in the teaspoon of vanilla paste and icing sugar to the cream and whip. Make sure the cream is a nice thick consistency before sandwiching a dollop between the chocolate cakes.   I added in a few drops of mint extract to  half of mine, and added in some finely chopped dark chocolate a a touch of green food colouring to make some of my filling mint chocolate chip.  Both were good! There you have a taste of America  - 16 chocolate and vanilla Whoopie Pies. 

Vanessa Kimbell's recipe book Prepped will be available to purchase in stores in April 2011.