Chocolate whoopie pies

I baked these delicious chocolate whoopie pies this past weekend for Easter. I used a recipe from the Chicago Tribune that was adapted from "Making Whoopies: The Official Whoopie Pie Book" by Nancy Griffin. The whoopie pie is said to have originated in New England but the exact location is still debated. My favorite story is of Amish women who would bake the desserts and pack them in their children's lunches. When the children opened their lunchboxes and saw the chocolate treat, the would yell, "Whoopie!".

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

Prep:1 hour   Cook: 12 minutes   Makes: 2 dozen

For the pies:                             1. Heat oven to 350. Mix together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt

2 cups flour                                in a mixer bowl. Add egg, oil, and vanilla; slowly beat in milk until

1 cup sugar                                 combined, about 2 minutes.

1/3 cup cocoa

1 tsp baking soda                  2.  Drop batter by tablespoons onto parchment-lined baking sheets, leaving

1/4 tsp salt                                  room for spreading. Bake 12 minutes. Cool completely on wire racks.

1 egg

1/3 cup salad oil                    3.  For filling, combine all ingredients in a bowl; beat until smooth. Spread

1 tsp vanilla                                about 2 tablespoons of the filling per cookie on the flat side of half of the

3/4 cup milk                               cookies. Top with remaining cookie to make sandwiches.

Filling:

1 stick butter

1 cup each: confectioners'

   sugar, marshmallow cream

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

The recipe makes 2 dozen smaller whoopie pies; I wanted to make some larger ones also, so I just dropped larger scoops of batter on the baking sheets. For the filling, I had to double the recipe to have enough for all the pies and used a pastry bag to pipe the filling onto the cookies.