Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Caramel Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

As I stated at the end of my chocolate macarons recipe post, I had a ton of caramel cream cheese frosting left over. So after a while of it sitting in my fridge. I decided to make chocolate whoopie pies and use the frosting as the filling. It didn't take me long to find a recipe: a while ago I bought a whoopie pie recipe book at Barnes & Noble. So I pulled it from my (barely used) recipe bookshelf and found a recipe for chocolate whoopie pies (not hard to find as it was the first one. Based on the recent Portland, Maine, episode of the Food Network show I Hart Food, chocolate with marshmallow filling is the original whoopie pie flavor). I mainly chose whoopie pies because a few years ago I got a whoopie pie pan at Kohl's and I've only used it once. Plus, these things are pretty easy to make.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Caramel Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

Chocolate Whoopie Pies (Whoopie Pies, pg. 8)

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/3 cup buttermilk (a.k.a. 1/3 cup milk and 1 tsp. lemon juice)

Caramel Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

• Ingredients and recipe here

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350℉. Line three large baking sheets with baking paper (I just sprayed the whoopie pie pan with PAM).
2. Use an electric mixer to beat the butter and sugar in a medium bowl, scraping down the side as necessary, until pale and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat well.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda together. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately in two separate batches each. Beat on low speed for 2 minutes or until well combined.
4. Use a 3/4 inch plain nozzle to pipe 28 2-inch rounds of the mixture onto the baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between them to allow for spreading. Bake for 12 minutes, swapping the sheets around after 8 minutes, or until just firm to the touch. Allow to cool for 2 minutes on the baking sheets then transfer to a cake rack to cool completely. (For this I followed the directions on the box for the whoopie pie pan, which stated to spoon 2 tablespoons of batter into each cavity and spread the batter around to smooth it out.)
5. Spread the marshmallow (or chosen flavor) frosting over the flat sides of half the whoopies. Sandwich with the remaining whoopies.

I probably should've doubled the recipe as I only made half as much as the recipe said (7 as opposed to 14. The pan box said to fill the cavities 2/3 full so maybe that's where I went wrong). So of course, when I took them into work on Monday, they were gone by lunch. However, no matter how many I made they might've been gone by then anyway since there were a couple "yummy!" compliments on the piece of paper I put out with the name of the treats.

The only downside is that my plan to use up all my frosting backfired as I still have a lot left. Now what? (Also, tip for this frosting: don't make and use in the heat. Not sure if it's the cream cheese part or the buttercream part of the name but it melts FAST in hot weather. Although maybe that's just frosting in general...)