WHOOPIE!

Pies that it!

We went to Hershey, PA on vacation last year. The highlight of the trip for my kids wasn’t Hershey Park, or the Chocolate Factory, or Amish Country, it was Whoopie Pies. We went to a great farmers market in Bird in Hand, PA and there were a few stands selling Whoopie Pies made by the Amish. They were huge chocolaty discs, bigger than Evan’s 11 year old hands. The boys were in heaven and couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to devour their pies. I wasn’t aware that some people on the West Coast have never heard of these, but after reading about them on Baking Bites.com (where I originally found this recipe), I was informed that our neighbors to the left might not have any idea what they are. From Baking Bites:

A Whoopie Pie is a commonly found treat in New England, but is relatively unknown elsewhere, especially on the West Coast. The pies are not really pies at all, as you have probably discerned from the photo above, but are two chocolate cookie/cake discs with a vanilla cream filling sandwiched between them. They’re not like sandwich cookies and not like cream filled cupcakes, but are an entity unto themselves. No one can say for certain where the name came from, though the most widely held belief is that they were named after the reaction that they were intended to elicit from people who ate one.

There's Evan eating a giant whoopie pie back at the hotel room in PA last year.

These are a smaller petite version of the giant pies we got in Amish country. They are almost devil dog like, but not quite. This recipe made up a batch of 24 (48 tops & bottoms). I had more than enough filling. You really don’t want the middle gushing out when you bite into one. Most of the cream filling recipes that I have come across use shortening which can give the cream a gritty bite. I was happy to see shortening omitted in this version.

Normally I would print the recipe here but this one was originally printed in the cookbook The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle. Since I don't wanna get hauled off to blogger jail, I'm going to link this one. You can find it on the Leite's Culinaria site:

http://www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/cookbook/whoopie_pie.html

Go make this recipe and don't forget to pour yourself a big glass of milk to eat them with.