Whoopie Pies

I've been promising my friend Emily for a while that we'd have a baking date, and today the stars finally aligned. After much debate ("What should we make?" "I don't care." "How about Whoopie Pies?" "What the hell is a Whoopie Pie?" "Great, it's settled then."), we decided to make some Whoopie Pies.

It's been a while since I've used brown sugar in a recipe. Which is a shame, since brown sugar adds such great sweetness and depth of flavor to food. Sometimes granulated sugar just doesn't cut it, you know?

The recipe I found called for marshmallow fluff in the frosting, but the Safeway near my apartment didn't have any, so I just said "screw it" and made a batch of cream cheese frosting instead. Then I divvy'd up the frosting between three bowls and colored them pink, blue, and green. Pastel shades, of course. It's almost Easter, y'all!

The colors turned out pretty well, if I must say so myself. I just wish I had remembered to make a batch of yellow frosting. Yellow is such an Easter-y color. Fuzzy baby chickens...marshmallow Peeps...Easter eggs, and uh...mostly just chicken-related things, I guess.

Somehow Emily and I missed the part of the recipe that said to "mix one large egg into the batter." Guess we were a little too engrossed in our debate of the origin of the whoopie pie (See: "History of the Whoopie Pie"). Fortunately, the pies seemed to be unaffected by their lack of egg -- they rose to puffy mounds as they were supposed to, and were soft, cake-y and delicious. Also, while I can't attest to the tastiness of the original filling, I can tell you that these cakes were great with cream cheese frosting. Marshmallows vs. cream cheese? Can't really lose either way.

For the recipe, visit the good people at Epicurious. For an explanation of what the heck a Whoopie Pie is, check out Wikipedia.