Makin' whoopie

There's a lot to celebrate this week!

Yesterday was my co-worker Jolie's last day with us. No, we're not celebrating she's leaving (we kind of hate that part) but we did want to celebrate all her awesome-ness and how much we've enjoyed working with her. We did so with food. Lots of food. And two bottles of champagne (for them) and ginger ale (for me). For her going away, I decided to try out the Pumpkin Whoopie Pie recipe that Steph said had my name written all over it.

But wait! Yesterday was also Molly's birthday. And I couldn't remember if she liked pumpkin, but I did remember that her wedding cake was red velvet. Looks like I'm making two versions of Whoopies!

There was measuring ....

And mixing...

And spooning onto trays.

You may remember I tried these before and while they were very tasty, didn't look so pretty. This time I picked up a 2" cookie scoop from Target and it made all the difference in the world. It helped the whoopies stay rounded and fluffier, and more uniform in size. I don't know how I have baked for so long without a cookie scoop.

I also lined the cookie tray with parchment paper this time and that also worked miracles. The bottoms didn't get as dark and they were really easy to get off the tray.

Last time, I just spooned the icing onto the cookies. This time I put it into a plastic bag, snipped off a corner, and piped it into the center of the cookie. This helped so that when I put the top cookie on it spread evenly and didn't squirt over the edges as much.

The pumpkin recipe produced a much moister cookie/cake. Very dense, very very moist. The red velvet recipe was a lot lighter, but a lot drier. It also flattened out significantly more than the pumpkin one. Both were incredibly delicious (one of my coworkers simply said "Oh. My. Gosh.") and even though I usually like pumpkin way better, something about this red velvet was amazing. Maybe the buttermilk? I'm not sure. It was some of the best red velvet I've had. Wish I wouldn't have run out of red food coloring.

Find the pumpkin recipe at Our Best Bites and the red velvet at Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body. I used the cream cheese icing from the pumpkin one for both. I cut the pumpkin recipe in half and it made about a dozen. The red velvet made exactly one dozen. (That's a dozen whoopie pies - or 24 individual cookies/cakes).