12 Treats of Christmas: Mini Whoopie Pies - Red Velvet

Hey all! Time for some more sweets! These cute little cakes are less of a traditional Christmas dessert but are becoming sort of a tradition for me as I've made them the last 3 or 4 Christmases. Being from Maine, I pretty much grew up knowing what a Whoopie Pie is, but if you're going, "A whoopie what??" I'll explain. A whoopie pie is basically two flat cakes, or cookies, as some refer to them, joined together with a sweet marshmallow-ey cream. While these palm or burger-sized treats can be found in gas stations and Ma & Pa restaurants all over New England, they were originally invented with the Amish.


Though I have made large, small, chocolate, pumpkin and other types, I usually make the traditional huge size whoopie pies. These minis were inspired by some that I saw in Starbucks while waiting for coffee. I figured "DUH, I love red velvet, why haven't I done that? Plus they're little!!" Red and white, and add some green and they are all ready for Christmas! I didn't do cream cheese filling like Starbucks had because for me, it is just NOT a whoopie pie without that traditional cream frosting!

**(Next time I will probably use my own red velvet cake recipe, I adapted this one from JoyOfBaking.com's recipe and they were just a little dryer than my taste for a whoopie pie, despite using oil in the batter which always makes them nice and moist. Also, don't use dutch process cocoa at all costs, I think that was the culprit in this recipe as you should always omit baking soda when using the dutch process cocoa which has been alkalized. Since dutch-process was all I had, I gave it a go. These were still fabulous though! I will try again sometime to see how well my red velvet bakes up as a "whoopie cookie" and re-post the results!)

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies (mini) 

For the cake:

• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup dutch process cocoa
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• .75 to 1 oz of red food coloring (the concentrated kind, ie. Wilton) this amount will make them nice and red like my Red Velvet "Big Top" Cupcakes In this batch of whoopie pies, I probably used a third of an ounce or less of red dye

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat together the oil and sugar until blended. Add in the egg and mix until smooth. Stir in vanilla.


2. Mix together all the remaining dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Stir the food coloring into your buttermilk. Now add the combined dry ingredients to the egg/sugar mixture gradually, alternating with the 'red milk'. Do not over blend!


3. On a lightly greased cookie sheet, scoop batter using a small cookie scoop, keeping them about an inch and half or more apart. To get the really tiny ones, I used a regular teaspoon and scraped against the side of the bowl until the batter was about half-way up the spoon. Then I just used a finger to push it onto the cookie sheet. 


4. Bake 7-9 minutes, or until the tops spring back when poked. Immediately remove to a wire cooling rack. Once completely cool, pair 2 similar sized "cookies" together and add a generous heap of cream filling to the bottom side of one half. Then sandwich them together like an Oreo and eat!


For the filling: (This is the BEST FILLING! I use it for them all!) A half recipe will frost just about all the mini pies, but if making larger ones, make the full filling recipe.

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 & 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 cups marshmallow cream (I use either Fluff brand or the value Walmart brand. Both are great)
• 1 & 1/2 tsp vanilla

1. Blend together shortening, sugar and marshmallow until the marshmallow is well blended in. Stir in vanilla and color if desired. That's it!

 I did not have enough red dye and as you can see, they are

not very RED....but still delicious. The ones pictured here are just 

under 2 inches in diameter!

And I made Bailey, our dog, her own version: "Snappy Pies!" 

The cream didn't have anything that could hurt her in small 

quantities, so I sandwiched it in her little Snaps dog treats :-)

Sources: http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/WhoopiePieHistory.htm (This is the traditional whoopie pie recipe I use, it is absolutely fool proof and wonderful! Great info too!)


Photos by The Chocolate Cookie