Thursday, October 23, 2008

Cookie Carnival


This is my first time participating in the Cookie Carnival, a monthly event organised by Kate from the Clean Plate Club. Each month a cookie is selected and everyone bakes it. This month’s is pumpkin whoopie pies. You can find the recipe here on the Martha Stewart website. This is complete first for me – first time baking for the cookie carnival and also the first time I have made or even tasted whoopee pies.

Whoopie pies are almost like little cakes – they have the consistency of a ginger kiss or a sponge drop and are joined together with icing. The icing of the pumpkin whoopie pies was cream cheese based – I am not sure if that is a common feature or not. As we don’t have canned pumpkin puree in NZ, I steamed and mashed pumpkin. It isn’t pumpkin season here at the moment, so the pumpkins have lost a bit of their sweetness and are a bit dry – but it didn’t matter too much for these pies. I did have to add a lot more icing sugar to the icing to get it the right consistency. I am not sure whether others had this problem – it may be a symptom of the recipe being a Martha Stewart one, as I know some others do have problems with the quantities in her recipes. My icing isnt the bright orange of Martha's either - not sure if this is because of the amount of icing sugar I used or because I used real pumpkin as opposed to canned.

I am not sure if I love whoopie pies – I think I would prefer a small cake or something with cream! Although, there is a recipe on Martha’s site for peanut butter whoopie pies – that sounds like my kind of thing!

9 comments:

Snooky doodle said...

these still look good. I m not sure if I ll be making these today since the recipe didn t sound that interesting for me either and I have to steam the pumpkin too to do these since canned pumkin is not availabble here either .

Jacque said...

MMmmmm, yours look delish! My filling wasn't quite as orange as martha's either (I haven't posted mine yet). And I'm kind of like you, not exactly thrilled. I actually thought the cookies were better without the filling.

Anyway, welcome to Cookie Carnival!

Jules Someone said...

They look lovely. I thought these were ok. Maybe with a different filling.

Cakelaw said...

I have always been curious about Whoopie Pies myself, but don't think they are my thing. Yours look good.

Cristine said...

Looks yummy! PB whoopie pies would be delicious!

Kirstynn Evans said...

These look great! Welcome to the club!

Anonymous said...

welcome to the club!

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the world of Whoopie Pies. They are sort of a New England and Northeastern USA thing. I applaud your extra affort for having to steam the pumpkin yourself.

Stacey said...

Welcome to the carnival!