Strawberry Whoopie Pies

Not too long ago, I decided to try making whoopie pies! I'd never actually had one before, so I'm not sure if mine turned out accurately... but they were good anyhow! Very indulgent, especially given the amount of butter. But how can you resist the cuteness and strawberry-ness of these portly little desserts?

Recipe
from Baked bakery, as made by sleevesofsatin, found here

Ingredients

For the cookies:

• 1 cup (about 5 ounces) cored and halved strawberries
• 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp salt
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2/3 cup canola oil
• ½ cup plain full-fat yogurt
• 2 large eggs

For the filling:

• 1 cup (about 5 ounces) cored strawberries
• 5 egg whites
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• 4 sticks butter at room temperature, cut into cubes

Directions

For the cookies:

1.) Preheat oven to 350°.

2.) In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the strawberries 4-5 times until chopped and chunky, but not puréed. You want to be able to see chunks of them in the cookies. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and then set aside.

3.) In a large bowl, whisk together brown sugar and oil by hand, breaking up any clumps if necessary. Whisk in chopped strawberries and yogurt until just combined, then whisk in eggs, one at a time, also just until combined. Carefully fold in the flour mixture in two parts, being sure not to overmix. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Make the filling while the batter chills.

4.) Once the batter has chilled, line a few baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a measuring spoon, drop a heaping tablespoon of batter onto sheets, spacing dollops about 2 inches apart since they will spread quite a bit. Bake 10-12 minutes per batch or until they’re springy when you gently press down on a cookie. Don’t overbake them – you want them cakey and spongey-soft. Remove cookies from oven and cool completely on a wire rack.

For the filling:

1.) Using your food processor again, purée the other cup of strawberries until smooth. Set aside.

2.) Using a double boiler, whisk the egg whites with the granulated sugar until dissolved and the mixture is milky white, about 2 minutes. If you don’t have an “official” double boiler, just put an inch of water in a pot and bring it to a boil, then place a metal bowl big enough so it can sit on the edge, but not touch the water and then cook the sugar and egg whites as indicated.

3.) Transfer the egg white mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and whisk on high speed until soft peaks form and mixture is glossy, about 2 minutes.

4.) Remove the whisk attachment and replace with the paddle attachment. Add butter a few tablespoons at a time and beat until smooth and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

5.) Add reserved strawberry puree, beat mixture, then set aside for assembly. To assemble the cookies, smear a good amount of filling on one cookie and then top with a naked one.

Wet batter ingredients. For some reason this shot of strawberry pulp made me chuckle.

The cookie batter!



Ready to bake (I failed at making circular scoops pretty often...)



Baked! As you can see, this recipe makes a ton. I also had a good amount of extra filling left over, but my mom claimed it and I think she just ate it with bread.



Fluffy interior :D



This filling was absolutely decadent. Fluffy, creamy, and the perfect pink color without the aid of food coloring....



Mountain of messily assembled whoopie pies (I was in a hurry! And the filling looks creamier here than in the first picture of this post because those were assembled the next day, after the filling had chilled overnight and had not yet completely warmed up.)

Notes:

- Instead of measuring my strawberries before pureeing or processing them, I just did a cup of each after they had been in the food processor. This might mean my recipe has a bit more strawberry than the instructions dictate, but everything still went well.
- I also chilled the batter for longer than instructed (perhaps a bit over an hour), which might account for the puffiness of my cookies. The pictures I saw in the bbb post and on Oprah's site both seem to show extremely flat cookies, but mine puffed up instead - which personally I like but wasn't expecting based on those photos.
- I seem to have bad luck with egg whites, but I was having a hard time deciding when they could be considered "milky white" and therefore cooked. I ended up keeping them over the boiling water for much longer than 2 minutes, but when I began to beat them, I never really achieved peaks of any sort. Instead I eventually settled for extremely glossy egg whites and went ahead and beat in the butter, and the filling seemed to work well enough! (It also doesn't take on the consistency of meringue at all... the whites just seem to add a ton of volume to the filling, which works fabulously.)

There are a lot of steps involved in making these (and a lot of cleanup), but there isn't any part that is seriously difficult. All in all, these whoopie pies were a fantastic success and devoured shortly - sinfully indulgent desserts but with the wonderful flavor of strawberries... so you can convince your brain that perhaps there is some health value to them ;)