Well this has certainly been a long time coming. I feel I should apologise to all the people referred to my blog by search engines looking for a whoopie pie recipe only to leave disappointed. I didn’t think the site was THAT well optimised which just goes to show the power of keywords in your copy.

I’ve been trying to nail this recipe for over 6 months, tried and tested 14 separate recipes and made many adjustments of my own looking for a perfect recipe. The lack of a marshmallow filling in this recipe probably means I shouldn’t actually be calling this a perfect recipe as it doesn’t stick to the tradtional recipe for a whoopie pie but I’m going with what’s perfect to me. Marshmallow makes the cake a bit to sweet for my liking which is why I prefer to use a butter icing one but if you would prefer a marshmallow filling leave a comment below and I’ll email you a different recipe for the filling.

One last note about portions. A traditional tablespoon of this mixture will give you quite a large cake, a teaspoon (or melon baller) is more reasonable. Try to keep your portion sizes as similar as possible; remember that you will need two of each cake to make a finished whoopie pie so it makes things easier if they aren’t odd sizes.

You will need

175g self raising flour
100g of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp of bicarb of soda
1 tsp of baking powder
a pinch of salt
200g of caster sugar
125g of butter/margarine at room temp
1 large egg at room temp
230ml of buttermilk (If you’re lazy like me and prefer to use the all the 284ml in one tub of buttermilk compensate with a little more flour)
1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract (not essence)

Icing
150g Soft butter/magarine
300g icing sugar sifted
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 to 2 tsp of milk (or cream if you feel flush)
A few drops of food colouring (optional)

In a bowl or a standing mixer cream your butter and sugar together until the sugar has been completely mixed in and the mixture is nice and light. In a separate bowl sieve together all the remaining dry ingredients, mix thoroughly until your dry mix looks similar to drinking chocolate. Add around a third of the dry mixture in to the bowl with the butter/sugar and mix gently adding the egg and some of the buttermilk. Alternate adding the dry mix and butter milk until all are added, then add your vanilla extract. The end mixture should be much stickier and denser than a regular cake mix.

At this point in the process most other recipes will tell you to either portion out your mix and bake it or put it in the fridge for 30 minutes, ignore that. If you want to have nicely risen little domes on your whoopie pies leave the mixture for 10 minutes to allow the bicab and baking powder to react together before portioning out and baking. Bake in a preheated oven at gas mark 4 (180c) for 10 minutes. If you are making larger pies allow a few more minutes in the oven. A good test to see if they are ready is to press down on top of one, it should be spongy but still give a little. Let them cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the buttercream icing beat 150g of butter until it is smooth and creamy, gradually add the icing sugar until all the sugar has been absorbed add the milk, vanilla and the food colouring and mix until you have a smooth cream. You can either use a palate knife to smooth the buttercream on to your whoopie pies or you can pipe it on. Put icing on the flat side of one cake and stick this to the flat side of another similarly shaped cake.

The whoopie pies should keep for a week in an air tight container though they’re gone way before then in my house. If you try the recipe out let me know how you got on and please do post your pictures.

Enjoy