Anniversary Whoopie…and a giveaway!

Last week was a milestone for Strudel and Streusel… on November 23rd, we celebrated our one year anniversary!  We’ve loved blogging and baking separately, skype-ing together, and we’ve achieved my main goal: keeping in touch with Strudel out there in Seattle.

 

To celebrate, we want to share one of the greatest gifts I could think of: the gift of a whoopie pie! Or, truthfully, the ability for you to make your own whoopie pie. I’ve been wanting to post about this ingenious baked good for a while, and when I found this awesome book, I figured there was no better way to celebrate our anniversary than to share it with our fabulous readers!

 

For more details on the giveaway, and the gorgeous pies, follow the link below.

I was first introduced to whoopie pies in Connecticut back in 2006 when I visited family out there.  I saw them in every grocery store from Portland, Maine to Boston, Mass on that same trip! I kept thinking to myself, “Could it be?!  There is a cake that has the frosting on the inside of two easily held layers of tasty crumb?  Brilliant!”

 

I found this cookbook, and discovered that it beautifully re-created what I found in all those grocery stores on the East Coast. Please help us celebrate turning one, and enter to get this cookbook!

 

To enter our giveaway to make this cookbook yours, you can do one of two things:

 

1. Leave a comment on any post before December 25th.

or

2. Sign up to be a subscriber at www.strudelandstreusel.com before December 25th.

 

At the end of the month, we’ll randomly select a reader to receive this book!

 

Now, on to a recipe from the book…

 

Lemon Whoopie Pies with Mascarpone Filling

 

Cake

2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

4 T. unsalted butter, room temperature

4 T. butter flavored Crisco

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. brown sugar (this is the only modification I made for high altitude from the book)

2 large eggs

1/2 c. buttermilk

grated zest of one lemon

2 T. lemon juice

1/2 t. vanilla extract

 

Sift the first four dry ingredients together, set aside.  Zest the lemon, set aside.

 

With a stand mixer and paddle attachment, beat the butter and shortening together.  Add the sugars and beat some more.  Add the eggs and beat some more.  Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, buttermilk and vanilla and beat on low speed until well mixed.  Add half of the sifted flour mixture, beat and then add the remaining flour mixture.  Beat on high speed until the batter is fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.  Line a large baking sheet with either parchment paper or silpat.  I made large whoopie pies like I saw in New England so this recipe only made 6 whoopie pies.  Using a 1/4 c. scoop, scoop 6 balls of batter onto the baking sheet about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 10 minutes and then let cool completely (while the second batch bakes) on a cooling rack before frosting.

 

Filling

3 c. powdered sugar

1/2 c. mascarpone

4 T. butter, room temperature

1 t. vanilla extract

 

Beat the butter and mascarpone in the stand mixer with a paddle attachment and then add the sugar, beat slowly until incorporated, add the vanilla and then beat on high speed for several minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.

Fill a pastry bag, with a suitably wide tip (I used a 1A), with the frosting and place a generous amount of frosting on one whoopie half, place the other half on top of the frosting and gently squeeze the two together.

 

I easily ate one all by myself but these are huge so they can be (and probably should be) shared!

 

Posted on December 1, 2011
This entry was posted in baking, brunch, cakes, gobbledygook and tagged Anniversary, Lemon, Mascarpone, New England, whoopie pies.