Stir It Up!

Peanut butter whoopie pies

Whoopie pies are a chocolate 'cakey' cookie with a cream filling.

By Carol Ramos, The Pastry Chef's Baking / February 10, 2011

Whoopie pie fillings come in many flavors. This peanut butter version is especially decadent.

The Pastry Chef's Baking

Up until last month, I'd never had a whoopie pie. I knew what they were – cakey cookies sandwiched with filling - but I'd never made them before. Maybe it was because I didn't think cookies should be cakey. We all know how I feel about that subject. Maybe because I thought the name was silly - it's a pie? It's a cookie? It's whoopie? Okay, I get odd notions sometimes. In any case, whoopie pies were not in my every day baking arsenal.

However, last month, I made the Spiced Pumpkin Cookie Cakes which were essentially pumpkin whoopie pies. Those turned out pretty well so I was a bit more broad-minded when I saw this recipe for peanut butter whoopie pies from Martha Stewart's Cookies book. It was the same concept – cakey chocolate "cookies" with peanut butter filling. The main selling point though was it used 2 cups of buttermilk and I had a pint to use up this week before the expiration date so it seemed like a good opportunity to make whoopie (yeah, you know I had to get a bad pun in) ... pies.

These turned out really well. The batter is softer than a cookie dough but more firm than cake or brownie batter. I used two spoons to shape the blob of cookie dough/batter back and forth before dropping onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. I made the blobs fairly smooth and they smoothed out even further and baked into thick, puffy cookie-like shapes. I wouldn't call them cookies though since they had the texture and softness of a little cake. Definitely only bake these for 8 minutes as that's long enough to give them a nice, moist texture without being raw or dry. I only made half the peanut butter filling recipe since I tend to go light on fillings and knew a full recipe would be too much. I ended up a little short but I sandwiched the remaining cookies with dulce de leche that my friend Jenny brought back for me from South America. Heaven. Instead of cookies or "pie", think of these as little chocolate cakes sandwiched with peanut butter filling. Regardless of the nomenclature, they go down really well and look nice, too.

Carol Ramos

The Pastry Chef’s Baking

Carol Ramos trained to be a pastry chef at the Culinary Institute of America and has her certification in baking and pastry arts, but she has never baked professionally. Baking is just something she loves to do. Her blog chronicles her baking odyssey as she tests out different recipes. Her goals are to share her love of baking and convert people into becoming bakers, one dessert at a time.