Whoopie Pies 8/29/10

Last Sunday I got together with some friends and we went to a wine festival at Linganore Winecellars out in The Middle of Nowhere, MD.  And what pairs better with wine than some delicious cake?  Since we were going to be outdoors, I wanted to make something that we could eat with our hands and that I could transport easily.  I eventually settled on the Two Fat Cats Whoopie Pie from Rose's Heavenly Cakes.



I've made this recipe several times and it's become my fallback for events or small gatherings.  It keeps well a people really love it.  Here are all of the ingredients for the cake lined up and ready to go.





One of the things that I like about this recipe is that it mostly uses ingredients that I have on hand in the pantry, which means that I don't need to make special trips to the grocery store for that one obscure ingredient that I'll never use again.



Unfortunately, I've never been able to use an entire container of buttermilk in my life.  They always go off before I finish using the bottle.  I always feel like a jerk when I have to throw out dairy products.  It's pretty hard for me to gauge when buttermilk is fresh since I find both the smell and taste to be stomach-turning.  So sometimes the stuff sits in my fridge until green stuff starts to grow under the lid.  I figure that's a sure sign that it needs to go.

Fortunately, I haven't poisoned anyone yet with bad buttermilk.



The batter for this recipe was a complete mystery to me the first time I made it.  I was stressed out about spooning cake batter directly onto a cookie sheet.  I worried over the mounds of batter spreading and eventually forming one giant horrible chocolaty mass.



Clearly, I needn't worry myself so.



As the recipe is described on paper, it should make about six 3-inch cakes.  For some reason, I ended up with nine this time.  In the past, I've also increased the recipe by using a teaspoon measure to scoop the batter onto the cookie sheets, getting up to 25 smaller cakes out of one batch.




The filling for the whoopie pie recipe is a little intricate.  It involves several more steps than a normal buttercream, but the result is more than worth it.  The frosting is delicious without being too sugary or too rich, which can really kill a good cake.  While many frostings just cover a cake and overpower the flavor of the cake with sugar, this one harmonizes with the bitterness of the chocolate perfectly.



I love beating egg whites.  The way they foam up and then stiffen is like magic.  During our visit to the wine festival, we took a tour of the winery and were informed that the dry solids left over from the wine-making process are sold to McCormick and used to make cream of tartar.  That's the same cream of tartar that I used to make my egg whites stiffen into this bee-yoo-tiful foam.



Sugar and corn syrup on the boil.  Prior to trying out this recipe, I didn't have much (any) experience with melting sugar or candy making.  I still get stressed out around terms like 'soft-ball' and 'hard-ball' because it seems like some kind of dark science or strange alchemical process.  I have since discovered that this is exactly the case.

The egg whites from above with the sugar-syrup added in:



I really messed up this time by pouring the sugar over the beaters while they were running, even though the instructions explicitly warn against doing just that.  As a result, there were some chewy sugar bits in a few of my finished cakes.  They didn't taste bad, but the texture was ruined.



The meringue is added to whipped butter, resulting in a frosting that is to die for.  And now it's time for the assembly line.



I lined up tops and bottoms that were more or less the same size to make evenly sized sandwiches.



Then I loaded up the filling.  I hate having leftover frosting because I just end up eating it.  I can't help myself!  It's too tasty!



And the finished cakes are as pretty as can be.  Since mobility and convenience were of the essence for this trip, I wrapped the cakes in cellophane before throwing them in a bag and hitting the road.



The trip to the winery was great!  It was super-hot that day, so after a little bit of wondering around and getting shit-wrecked on wine samples, we dug in to the cakes.



Heat aside, it was beautiful out and we listened to some jazz standards on the lawn while snacking and chatting.



Look closely at the picture above and you'll see that we were conveniently located next to what one local called the 'port-a-johns.'  You'll also notice that I refuse to open my eyes in a picture.



Everyone had a pretty great time shoving cake into their cake holes.  Especially Chelsea, who enjoyed it so much that she took two!