That’s how much I love you guys.

Of course, you don’t have to make the filling on peppermint whoppie pies pink, but then they would just kind of look like a ginormous Oreo cookie. Not that that would be bad, but it’s just not what I was going for here.

Anyway, these turned out perfect!

Looks good in pink.

I have a coworker (Hi Sam!) that is actually a master of the whoopie pie. It’s a tricky balance with these guys so I decided to consult her as an expert. She sent me a few recipes and I went to work. I think they turned out pretty fantastic.

Peppermint Whoopie Pies

Yield: Makes 18-20 pies.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

For cakes:
4 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup Dutch-process cocoa powder (high quality)
2.5 Teaspoons baking soda
2 Teaspoons salt
2 Cups well-shaken buttermilk
2 Teaspoons vanilla
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
2 Cups packed brown sugar
2 large eggs

For filling:
1.5 Cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
3 Cups powdered sugar
1.5 Teaspoons peppermint extract
A few drops of red food coloring

Directions:

1) Sift dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl.

2) Add butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together.

3) Mix in vanilla and eggs.

4) Slowly add in flour and buttermilk in alternating stages to creamed butter. Start with dry ingredients and end with dry ingredients. It goes 1/3 of flour, 1/2 of buttermilk, 1/3 of flour, 1/2 of buttermilk, and finally the last 1/3 of flour.

5) Mix it together on low until it all is combined.

6) Spoon dollops of it onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

7) Bake at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes. Rotate pans once to make sure they cook evenly. They should be slightly springy when they are done.

8) Let cool on the sheet for a minute or two and then move them to a wire rack to cool. Let them cool completely.

9) For filling, add room temperature butter to mixer and mix on medium until it is creamy.

10) Add in tiny amount of peppermint.

11) Once flavoring is added, slowly add in sifted confectioners sugar.

12) Once all sugar is incorporated, add drops of food coloring.

13) Slather on as much of the mixture as you want between two of your baked cookie-cake things. Repeat!

Pie recipe from a Gourmet 2003 recipe. Filling recipe from A Bon Appétit Dec. 2005 recipe.

Making the cakes

To me, what makes a delicious whoopie pie is a light, airy cake (and it actually is closer to a cake than a cookie or pie). It’s not always easy to get right though, but when you do, you will definitely exclaim, “WHOOPIE!”

To start, sift all your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl. It’s important to sift here or whisk furiously to make sure your dry ingredients are nice and light.

Whisked or sifted please.

Meanwhile, add your butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together. I let mine mix for about 3 or 4 minutes until it was very light. If you are using a hand mixer you might need to go even longer.

Look ma... No hands!

Next, mix in your vanilla and eggs. Then slowly add in your flour and buttermilk in alternating stages to your creamed butter. As always with cake recipes like this, start with dry ingredients and end with dry ingredients. So it goes 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, and finally the last 1/3 of your flour.

Then just mix it together on low until it all is combined. The last thing you want to do is over-mix this. If you do that you’ll have tough, very non-whoopie worthy pies.

Very chocolatey.

Once it’s mixed well, spoon dollops of it onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. You could make these as big or small as you want, but just try to get them as uniform as possible.

I went for about 2 Tablespoon-sized cakes. Keep in mind they will grow quite a bit while baking so leave an inch at least between each pie.

Kind of haphazard.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes. Rotate your pans once to make sure they cook evenly. They should be slightly springy when they are done.

Let them cool on the sheet for a minute or two and then move them to a wire rack to cool.

Light and fluffy!

For some reason it didn’t dawn on me that making 20 whoopie pies is actually baking 40 individual mini-cakes. I was able to do 8 per baking sheet so it took me 3 rounds of baking to finish them all using two baking sheets at a time. I went ahead and reused my parchment paper even though that’s apparently a no-no. I didn’t notice any difference in the later rounds of baking.

Cool it down

It’s very important to make sure that your cakes are absolutely cool before icing them. Otherwise your frosting will just melt and you’ll have sad little pink pools of butter.

Anyway, while they are cooling (or baking), you need to make this bad-ass pink frosting.

Some whoopie filling recipes call for marshmallows, but I skipped that and just made a really thick butter cream frosting. It worked great!

4 simple ingredients.

Start by adding your room temperature butter to your mixer and mixing it on medium until it is, well, creamy. Then add in your tiny amount of peppermint. Be careful with this stuff. It’s very potent and too much of it will turn your whoopie pie into an Altoid (not a good thing for a huge cookie).

Once your flavoring is added, slowly add in your sifted confectioners sugar. It’s a lot of sugar. Go slowly or you’ll end up with a layer of the stuff all over your kitchen.

That might happen anyway, but you can at least try to avoid it by going slowly.

Once you get all your sugar incorporated, add just drops of food coloring. Just remember. It’s easy to add more. It’s impossible to remove it.

And after all that, you’ll end up with this lovely product, which might win the award for most colorful Macheesmo photo of the year.

FAB-U-LOUS!

I think you can probably imagine the next step, but it involves slathering on as much of this stuff as you want between two of your baked cookie-cake things.

Heavy on the frosting.

Repeat.

From the top.

You can of course go crazy with the frosting, but a little restraint is good I think. The frosting can be overpowering if you slather it on too thickly.

I like to go for a pretty even layer – like this:

Cross-section shot is crucial.

I brought these to a work lunch and they seemed to be popular. I even got approval from the queen of whoopie pies, so you know they are good.

It's Crazy!

I got this recipe from a good friend who happened to be a previous pastry chef at a very prominent DC bakery. This is a recipe he came up with for a wedding cake actually, but let me tell ya… it makes really good cupcakes. Super light and fluffy but still rich and flavorful. Awesome stuff.

Vanilla Cake (Thanks Chris!)

Base mixture:
- 226 grams butter
- 348 grams sugar

Dry stuff:
- 348 grams cake flour (very important. I tried this recipe once with pastry flour and it didn’t work at all.)
- 4 Teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 Teaspoon salt

Wet stuff:
- 1 Cup Milk
- 1.5 Teaspoons vanilla extract (or brandy or some other flavoring)

Meringue:
- 284 grams egg whites (about 8 eggs)
- 70 grams sugar

Step one is just creaming your butter and sugar together. You should end up with a light and fluffy mixture after a few minutes of beating. I use a hand mixer for this, but if you have a stand mixer, obviously you can use that. I guess also a whisk would work, but it’s gonna take some time.

Butter and Sugar. Beat the crap out of it.

To really get baking right, I think it is pretty important to weigh ingredients. It’s the only way to make sure everything is perfect. Digital scales are really inexpensive and I use mine for all kinds of things. Here are some common conversions though if you want the above recipe in Cups.

Digital scale is very important.

Mix all your dry ingredients together and all your wet ingredients separately. Then slowly add your dry and wet ingredients to your base mixture of sugar and butter. Start by adding about 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then add half the wet ingredients, then half of the remaining dry ingredients, the rest of the wet ingredients, and then the rest of the dry ingredients.

So you start with dry ingredients and you end by adding dry ingredients. You’ll end up with a batter but it will be very thick. That’s okay though, because we are about to add a large quantity of meringue to the batter.

The Meringue. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Do this one at a time and then add the white to the rest of the whites. If you get even one tiny speck of yolk in the whites, they won’t whip up due to the fat in the yolk. You’ll end up with a bunch of yolks that you can use for a yolk omelet or something. Just joking, but seriously you could make about 2 gallons of hollandaise sauce.

The whites are gonna be put to work.

All you need is the whites though. Start beating these with your hand mixer until they are very fluffy and forming light peaks, then slowly pour in your sugar. After a few more minutes of beating, stiff peaks will form.

Dang! That's a good lookin' meringue.

With a spatula, fold the meringue into the previous batter mixture. It will lighten substantially and be velvety smooth. Fold it slowly and take your time. You want to keep as many of the bubbles in the meringue as possible. Be gentle here people.

Folding the meringue in makes it super-light.

Now of course you could just bake this as is and it would be delicious. But I took a few tablespoons of the mixture in a few different bowls and added some fun colors to them. I used the gel coloring rather than the liquid. The liquid would really change the consistency of the batter.

FUN.

My idea was to put the colors in the middle of each cupcake and then swirl them around a bit. So I did a layer of white batter in each cup, then randomly poured the colors in each cup.

Kids would love this.

Finally I topped each cupcake off with more white mixture and then used a butter knife (or toothpick) to gently swirl the mixture. Just make two or three swirls. If you do more than that you will combine all the colors too much and end up with a purple filling. Not as fun.

Stir it up!

Bake these guys at 375 for 20-25 minutes. When they come out of the oven they will be puffed up, but as they cool they will calm down a bit. And yes, you want to let them to cool completely before you do anything with them.

I mean come on.

I’m not going to post the instructions for the frosting I made here. I used the exact instructions and recipe from Dyann Bakes. Her 1:2:3 butter cream worked out perfectly.

After the cakes cooled I frosted each of them pretty generously.

This cupcake would fail a psychedelic color test.

I brought these guys into work one day (because Betsy made me take them out of the house) and they were very quickly devoured. Not only were they really fun, but also very tasty.

Whether you do the colors or not, try out this cake recipe. It is killer.