When our friends hosted a Christmas cookie exchange last month, you may remember me telling you that our friend Cindy totally pwned everyone by bringing two kinds of whoopie pies. I was more than surprised when she said the recipe was just cake mix, 2 eggs and half a cup of oil. Naturally, I wanted to try them myself, then pawn them off on the girls at my office because I don't want them staring me in the damn face every time I walk into the kitchen.
I used dark chocolate fudge cake mix, added the eggs and oil, but though the mixture was still very dry. So, after perusing some other whoopie pie recipes, I added about 1/3 C water to make it a bit easier to handle. I dolloped about 1 rounded tablespoon of batter onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper* and popped them into a 350 oven. The timing is the tricky part. The batter is spread so thin that you have to watch it very closely. I took the baking time for mini-cupcakes and cut it in half, at about 15 minutes. That was probably still a bit too long, as the cakes on the darker cookie sheet had a bit of a crunch to them. Not the worst thing ever, but they were more like soft Oreos than full on whoopie pies. So, I'd say about 10-12 minutes would be sufficient. Mine were also a little on the thin side - not fat and fluffy like the ones I'd had at the cookie party. I'm going to have to work on how to remedy this when I try again in spring with strawberry or lemon cake mix.
You might be wondering how to make the filling. Well, you could get all Martha and do it from scratch, but you can also half-ass it with the best of them. I took a can of cream cheese frosting and mixed in about 1/3 C smooth peanut butter. It was all I could do stop just eating it right out of the bowl and keep using it on the pies. The cream cheese frosting would be aces on carrot cake or red velvet whoopie pies, too.
*DO NOT even attempt this without parchment paper. I know - it's $4 a roll, but you'll thank me later.
