Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

In keeping with my pumpkin theme for the week, I decided to make these sweet little hand held treats.  Not quite a cupcake, not quite a cookie, and not at all really a pie...but oh so delicious!  I follow many cooking blogs and whoopie pies of various varieties seemed to keep coming up.  I had to try my hand at them and they are yummy!

The legend is that the Amish women used to bake them and put them in their husband's lunch boxes.  When the men broke for lunch after a hard day of farming and opened their lunch box to find these treats, they were rumored to have yelled "whoopie!" out of excitement.  After eating these sweet little babies, I can see why!

On a separate note, I had posted about being excited about making "whoopie pies tonight" and apparently Billy's head was in the gutter :P.  For the record, these are whoopie PIES, not whoopie :).  Totally family friendly!

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies 
Printer-Friendly Version

Photo Credit: Erin's Food Files

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon ground cloves
• 2 cups firmly packed dark-brown sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3 cups pumpkin puree, chilled
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Make the cookies: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, a nonstick baking mat, or grease well with butter; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves; set aside. In another large bowl, whisk together brown sugar and oil until well combined. Add pumpkin puree and whisk until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and whisk until well combined. Sprinkle flour mixture over pumpkin mixture and whisk until fully incorporated.
3. Using a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Transfer to oven and bake until cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of each cookie comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Let cool completely on pan.

Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting 
As seen on Erin's Food Files, originally adapted from Baked

Ingredients

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• ½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 3 TBSP maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground cinnamon

Directions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until smooth with no visible lumps. Add the cream cheese an beat until combined.
2. Add the powdered sugar, maple syrup and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add cinnamon. Be careful no to overbeat the filling, or it will lose structure.

To assemble: Turn half the cooled cookies upside down. Pipe filling (about a TBSP) onto that half. Place another cookie, flat side down, on top of the filling. Press down slightly so that the filling spread to the edges of the cookie. Repeat until all the cookies are used. Put the whoppie pies in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to firm before serving.

Source: From Baked, as seen on Martha Stewart