Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan Filling

How's the study going.

As you can see mine is going excellently.

For the last two days I have found myself leaving the library at rather early times (1pm and 2pm) after feeling uncomfortably hot on the upper floors. I also found myself with epic hunger sickness (that point where your hunger turns to nausea) but then the heat caused my salad and my tuna to warm up and that grossed me out. So in order to fix the problem I had to go home. Yup. That was my justification.


Like Tuesday. It was so so hot. 6am Tuesday morning it was pouring down. I mean bucketing down so I dressed in stockings (for once!) and a woollen top as was appropriate for the miserable weather. By the time lunch came around I had my tights around my ankles and shoes thrown on the floor under my desk. Thank god I was in the celebrity squares or else I would have been given some odd looks at my lack of pants. I had to go home. I couldn't study like this. It was indecent.

So yesterday. Yesterday was Wednesday. Once again my salad heated up and my mind had become more fogged than a bathroom mirror. Time to go home. I was going to have a nap. But then I didn't.

I baked instead. My reasoning? It was fun, it was soul restoring and Alix and I needed study noms for the week.

Ahaha. yeah. Well it was soul restoring, it was fun. But for the weeks worth of study noms? uuh it was more like three episodes of cougar town worth of noms, no study in sight.



The last time I made whoopie pies they were super domed and rather dry. The method also almost broke my beater, it was too thick and dough like.

To overcome this I altered the recipe and method a bit. Rather than add the wet ingredients last, making a huge glutenous mess, I decided to mix all the moist ingredients together first then slowly add the flour. I also upped the amount of yoghurt and milk in the mixture. I found this helped and made them far less stodgy.

As for the filling? I just made a simple buttercream icing and threw in a few good squirts of maple syrup. I had a few pecans left over from my pecan pies so I chopped them up finely and sprinkled them in between. Walnuts would work too. They gave a nice wee crunch in between all the soft moist cakeyness.


Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan filling

80g softened butter
150g castor sugar
1 large egg
140g plain yoghurt (I used vanilla)
50ml milk
I teaspoon vanilla
70g cocoa
200g flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Filling:
60g butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
A splash of milk to combine
A couple of squirts of maple syrup
chopped pecans or walnuts


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees

Attempt to cream the butter and sugar together. It won't work very well because there isn't enough butter but try to lighten the colour a wee bit. Add the egg. Beat until most of the sugar dissolves and the colour is a very pale yellow and the texture is fluffy. Add in the vanilla, yoghurt and milk. Beat until smooth.

Sift in the cocoa. Beat until the colour lightens from a dark brown to a lighter shade.

Sift in the four, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until combined. Try not to overmix.

Wet your hands and par dry them (so they are sill a little damp). Take small teaspoon sized blobs of dough and roll them into balls.

Next is the fun bit, throw the ball as hard as you can onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. This helps them to flatten out. Repeat and lets hope you don't have any collisions like I did. Flatten them a bit more with a wet spoon. I didn't do this. I wish I had, I think mine were far too round.

Bake for 10 minutes. You don't want to overcook them. It is better for them to be slightly undercooked than overcooked. That was they will be nice and fudgy.

Leave to cool because sandwiching together with the icing (which you creamed together earlier) and the chopped nuts.













Enjoy!

I advise you don't eat them all in one go right before dinner haha.