Another way to explain what I decided to make is to re-introduce you to one of my favourite bloggers, bakerella! She did a little feature on a book written by her friend on the new ‘thing’, whoopie pies. I have seen these around for a while. Subconsciously I casually wrote them off as a less successful than ‘cake-pops’ attempt at the reinvention of the cupcake’s commercial popularity. I had tasted the co-op’s sickly, expensive versions. What I hadn’t done is… baked them myself. And wow, have I missed out!
Enough. On with the recipe, you say. Well this raised a problem for me. Every recipe, including the one on Bakerella’s page, was in “cups”. Why do Americans insist upon this? Seb had scales. Not cups. So I spent a good half an hour in a Maths lecture translating this recipe for you into English, as I felt that a metric Whoopie pie recipe was needed, and one with English versions of ingredients too.
Chocolate & Strawberry Whoopie Pies (Metric/English ingredients version).
55g cocoa power
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Half tsp salt
4tbsp of unsalted butter*
4tbsp of Trex/Cookeen/other ‘vegetable shortening’ product equivalent
220g dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
250ml of milk
Method: Sift together flour, bicarb, salt and cocoa powder. In another bowl, beat together the butter & ‘shortening’ and then the sugar for several minutes until combined & fluffy. Beat in the egg & vanilla extract. Finally, mix in half the flour mixture & half the milk until smooth before adding the other half of each. Place spoonfuls of mixture onto non-stick baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at around 160 degrees C until they are springy.
*sorry, I didn’t get around to finding the equivalent of tbsps of butter, since I figured I could measure out a tablespoon’s worth!
To make a frosting, mix a tub of cream cheese with about 50g butter and icing sugar – this depends on your consistency, I would recommend under 100g of icing sugar to keep it thick. I layered the cakes with cream & slices of strawberry. And cut a few into heart shapes. Yum! To see the step-by-step version, go to Bakerella’s page.
What a delightfully-spent afternoon! I also made a delicious dinner, one which I planned a while ago in my scrapbook, and will share tomorrow. Also, another of my favourite themed bakes of the year is coming up: Halloween. Exciting!
1 Comments
Seb Motala
It's true: she did go to one of my mathematics lectures and actually did something a whole lot more productive than any of the mathematicians at that lecture. She worked on the recipe! π