Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Whoopie Pies

I don't know what it is, but I am just not feeling this week's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment, Chocolate Whoopie Pies. I love whoopie pies as much as the next person, but these just did not turn out the way I had hoped.

The first time I made this recipe, it was a total disaster. The first step in the recipe is to dissolve instant espresso powder and cocoa powder in hot water and hot coffee. Then you add brown sugar and vegetable oil, followed by an egg, vanilla, and buttermilk, and then finally the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda). I ended up with so much liquid in comparison to the dry ingredients that my batter was very thin, and there were clumps of flour that I was having difficulty incorporating. I decided to try baking a few cookies anyway, and they ended up very flat.

I tried the recipe again, this time omitting the hot water in the recipe to reduce the amount of liquid. The batter was still quite thin, thinner than I am used to with whoopie pies. To my mind, each half of a whoopie pie should be domed like a little cake, not flat like a cookie. My cookies still ended up flatter than I would have liked, but they had a nice flavor -- richly chocolate, with strong notes of coffee and espresso. The cookies were not as moist or tender as I would have liked; I assume this is related to the fact that they were so flat. I used a #24 scoop and ended up with 32 cookies that were three and a half inches in diameter.

The filling (egg whites, sugar, butter, vanilla, and salt) was very rich and creamy, and quite sweet -- the flavor was very close to the filling of an Oreo. I thought it complemented the cookies nicely. I think the majority of the bakers in the Baked Sunday Mornings group had no problem getting nicely domed cookies, so I'll willing to concede that my suboptimal results may be due to baker error. Regardless, I gave the recipe two chances and I think that's enough -- although I enjoyed the red velvet whoopie pie recipe from Baked Explorations, I'm just not a fan of the chocolate version. And since I already have another chocolate whoopie pie recipe that produces wonderful results, I'll stick with that one.

Recipe: "Chocolate Whoopie Pies" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

• "Baked Sunday Mornings: Red Velvet Whoopie Pies," February 13, 2011.
• "A Bit of Holiday Sparkle: The Gingerbread Whoopie Pie," December 1, 2009.
• "Baby Shower Baked Goods," October 8, 2008.
• "Whoopie!," September 1, 2008.