Simple Saturday

It seems that I enjoy sleeping in, more than I enjoy sitting on the beach. Once again, we did not go! Not that I don't crave the cool breeze, crashing waves and soft sand between my toes. I do not want to sit in a car for 2 hours to get there. Tomorrow, I am making a promise to myself, we are going! I will wake up at a decent hour, pack my beach belongings and head out on the road.

Instead, today I quickly jumped on the opportunity to start my "Whoopie Adventure." Yes, I have named it now, and baking for me IS an adventure. I made a list of ALL the things I would need to get started. With the only baking going on in the house, is of pre packaged cookie dough, there was lots to get. Even just the essentials were missing, sugar, baking soda, vanilla extract.

With my list in hand I found 'thee' isle to retrieve all my items from . ' confectioners sugar'... hmm where have I heard that before. My mother would be ashamed, she is an avid baker with little one as well. I should know this! I am pretty sure it is powdered sugar, but that little seed of doubt grabs the regular sugar as well. Of course my instinct was right, but at least I have more basics to start other recipes with.

I lay out all of my ingredients, Whoopie book close by, I am ready to go. I remember one time as a child, I really wanted to bake something for my family. I was going to make brownies. Everything went smoothly, mixed them myself, baked them. They looked delicious! That was until they went to eat them, everyone took one bite and spit it out! I had mixed my sugar for salt, and only a horse with a salt lick would enjoy my brownies. Since then, with grief from the family, I have never really been a baker. So we will see how this unfolds...

I decided to start out with a Mocha Whoopie, with Chocolate Buttercream Filling.

Carefully following every direction, reading over the simple instructions twice.

My batter is finished. It looks delicious. Using a spoon, I tried to scoop out equal sizes of batter into the whoopie pan. First test pan, into the oven.. 8 minutes later Lets see what they look like.

All my Whoopies came out bumpy on the top and at least twice as tall and fluffy than the pictures in the book. Hmmm.. So I decided to use a TB scoop and a spoon to round out the scoops. In the future I think I will use a melon baller, as the book suggests. Second and third batch come out just as fluffy! They were really tasty, but just really tall!


I assembled them with the buttercream filling.. And here is my finished Whoopie Pies!




They turned out well, but next time there will be some changes to make. Hopefully with more practice runs, I can perfect the 'look of them' but the taste is wonderful! The taste is slightly bitter chocolate and coffee, matched with the sweet and slightly salty buttercream filling. I have been munching on them all day long! Perfect with a hot cup of coffee or tea!

Overall successful. They were not burnt, I did not burn the house down, although I did have one casualty through the whole thing. My hand mixer would not mix the batter, and began to start smoking! Just add that to another thing to do differently next time!