Whoopie Pies
Seth and I were making one of our many drives between State College and Virginia a couple days ago when we stopped at a small mini mart. At the counter, they were selling whoopie pies, which is made with two small chocolate cakes with a creamy white filling. It’s a very traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dessert that I had a lot growing up, and just seeing them brought back a ton of memories. It also made me very hungry, but there was no way I would pay two bucks for one when I could easily make my own. I first had to call my mom for the recipe and then call her again and verify it was the correct recipe, which she assured me that as odd as it sounds, it was correct. The chocolate batter is similar to chocolate cake, but thicker. It needs to be thick enough to keep its shape when dished onto a cookie sheet. I had to add about 2 tablespoons of flour to get the right consistency. The filling was the strange part. The recipe calls for mixing egg whites, vanilla, powdered sugar, and flour together first before adding more powdered sugar and shortening. As my mom said, it sounds odd, but it came out perfectly. At the mini mart, they also sold whoopie pies with peanut butter filling. I was curious, so I mixed some peanut butter into half of my filling. Although it was good, it was too much like a chocolate peanut butter cupcake and not enough like a whoopie pie. Traditional is definitely the way to go with these. And on a side note - apparently whoopie pies are also known as gobs and black-and-whites. Seth claims he knows them as moon pies, but I told him that’s a different thing all together.