Whoopie Pie Weekend!

This past Memorial Day weekend, my good friend and college roommate came to town. Caroline now lives it up in DC. She was only going to be in Cola Saturday night and wanted to do dinner. I just had to bake something since I hadn't seen her since December!

Since her trip was spur of the moment, I wanted to make something easy with what I had. On Saturday I decided to make use of the Devil's Food Cake Mix I bought a while ago. I wanted to make this lower in calories and healthier. Instead of the vegetable oil required, I used the same amount of unsweetened applesauce. Instead of 3 eggs, I used 4 egg whites. I also had a recipe from my Betty Crocker Cupcakes Book for Vanilla Butter Cream icing I've used previously and decided it would be perfect.

As I was mixing this, I saw the recipe on the box for Mini Whoopie Pies. All you had to do was drop it on the parchment paper and bake it for 7-9 mins. I thought that would interesting to try. I just used two cookie sheets covered in Parchment Paper. I used 2 TBSP for each I dropped. It reminded me of making cookies. While that baked, I started on the frosting.

I took two sides and put frosting in the middle. I was afraid I would run out of frosting (I only made frosting for 12 servings) that I just put a little in the middle. Of course I ate some. They were so good! I had two... oops

Of course, I still had extra batter from my experiment, so I baked 12 cupcakes! I greased the muffin pan and when they were done, I put them in cupcake liners. They were stickier then usual, but they tasted so much better than if I had used yucky vegetable oil!!!

I played around with the frosting (BTW, any butter cream icing is amazing). The frosting was for 12 servings, but I was able to spread it out. I playfully decorated half the cupcakes (the circles are interesting... accidentally spilled the sprinkles). For the other 6 cupcakes, I sliced them in half and made mini mini whoopie pies by putting icing in the middle.

Did I mention that with the cupcakes, I put a few chocolate chips in the middle? (I poured batter, sprinkled a few chips, then put more batter.

I went back in to fill the whoopie pies since I had the leftover butter cream. It kinda tore the pies because they were sticky, but didn't hurt the taste. I used blue sprinkles because of memorial day weekend, but it made them look a bit funny, like if I used blueberries. :). Unfortunately, threw away the recipe, but it can be found on the back if you go to a grocery store.

I'm happy to say my friends loved the whoopie pies I made! I brought them to dinner and we ate them after our yummy sushi dinner at Sushi Yoshi. We had such a great time that night. We even split this huge XL Margarita Tower. And randomly, the table beside us were on their third L Margarita Tower and got too drunk and gave us theirs. We had to big Margarita Towers and Mucho Margaritas. It was crazy. Great night!

Red Velvet Cupcakes are amazing. The end.

For some reason I felt like food blogging. I has been about 8 months since my last confession blog. I started it to be consistent, lol. Friday is my sister's birthday (and Sunday is my dad's). I decided, since I haven't been to my sister's house in FOREVER, to visit her on Saturday and make her and her kids cupcakes. Upon my boyfriend's request, I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes. I can't believe how long it has been since I've made them or baked! I've been trying to eat healthy (and have lost 10 lbs!), and cupcakes is something I have NO control over.

I decided to make them from scratch (Also, this was a last minute thing and the grocery stores and Wal-Mart on this side of town do not carry the red velvet box mix!). I remembered how much I wanted to try out recipes from Joy the Baker. She has this cupcake recipe called 'My Favorite Red Velvet Cupcakes'. How could I resist?!

This definitely look me a long time. I hate making a mess, so I constantly cleaned up as I went. I almost wondered if all the energy and work I put in was worth it. I mean, the finale of The Office was on! I started at 7:30ish, but took a break to wait for the icing and cupcakes to chill and iced the cupcakes during the later half of Parks and Recreation.

Was it worth it? Yes!

I basically followed the recipe she adapted and listed on her web site. I used fat free cream cheese instead of regular and skipped the cinnamon in the cream cheese icing. I wish I could get the icing all thick and high, but this was still tasty. The recipe for each called for one dozen. I doubled the red velvet recipe because I wanted to sprinkle powdered sugar and make half of them different. I thought I could control myself by eating one. I used myfooddiary.com to calculated them to be 136 (Plus 46 with icing) for each cupcake. Pretty good, huh?

I would have, if I ate only one. But, of course, I ate two, plus a lot of icing licking!!! I got gel icing to write happy birthday, but it looked weird when I tested it on a couple non icing cupcakes. And the icing cupcakes are too pretty to write on. On well, I hope my family enjoys how pretty and tasty they are! :)


I am so glad I discovered Joy the Baker and hope to make more recipes from her site!!!

It is now way past my bed time...