I like sandwiches. My favourite would be ham and egg. What’s yours?

Actually just plain egg is pretty awesome too. Heh 🙂

Now, imagine a cake sandwich, with delicious buttercream filling inside and super shiny royal icing on top, covered in rainbow sprinkles.

That’s a whoopie pie! 🙂

Here’s one.

This is the first time I’ve made these beauties, and I have the tell you- I love the texture. The two halves of the chocolate cake sandwich are fudgy, yet really moist. It happens because of the yogurt in the batter. The buttercream filling is, well, yummy. Altogether, it’s a pretty darn good sandwich.

Here is a plateful. Don’t you want one? 🙂

Chocolate Whoopie pies
Largely adapted from: Step by step Baking

Prep time: 40 mins
Cook time: 12 mins
Makes: 10

Ingredients:

175 g unsalted butter, softened
150 g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
225 g flour, sifted
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
75 g cocoa powder, sifted
150 ml milk
4 tbsp thick yogurt

For the buttercream

100 g unsalted butter
200 g icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp milk (if needed)

For the royal icing

1 egg white
150 g icing sugar, sifted
few drops of lemon juice
sprinkles (optional)

Method:

For the pies

1. Preheat the oven to 180º C. Line two baking sheets/trays with parchment. Whisk together the butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well again.
2. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa. Spoon this dry mixture into the sugar-butter mix a little at a time, alternating with the milk until you use up all the dry mixture and all the milk. Now add the yogurt and mix it all together.
3. Spoon tablespoons of the mixture onto the lined baking trays, leaving space in between for them to spread. With another spoon dipped in warm water, smoothen the tops and try to get a roughly round-ish shape. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 12 minutes, remove and cool on a wire rack.

For the buttercream

In a bowl, mix together all the buttercream ingredients, except the milk. Whisk on high for about 3-5 minutes. If the mixture seems too thick add some milk to loosen it up a bit.

For the royal icing

Whisk the egg white with the sugar for about 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice and whisk on high for another two minutes. (This icing works really well on cupcakes too!)

For the assembly

Take the cooled whoopies and spread buttercream on the flat sides of half of them. Sandwich them with the other un-iced halves gently. You should be able to see some buttercream in the middle. Spoon some royal icing over each one, and spread gently with a spoon. Decorate if sprinkles if you like colour (like me!) 🙂