Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Chocolate Pistachio Cream Whoopie Pies

leaves and flours vegan chocolate pistachio whoopie pies

Whoopie pies are some combination of cake and sandwich cookie that intrigues me. I definitely prefer them to cake, but they rank a little lower on my scale of my favorite sweets than an ice cream sandwich cookie. I haven’t made whoopie pies many times. In fact I can only remember having made two batches that were both pumpkin and cream cheese. I saw the recipe for these on Bake and Destroy. Natalie’s vegan recipes have never failed me.
I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used a mixture of regular and dark cocoa powders, and vanilla soy yogurt rather than tofu. I haven’t gotten over my fear of tofu in sweets yet. I have made two cream pies, a chocolate and a coconut, that were successful at hiding the soybean flavor. In most cases, I can still taste the soybean and so I tend to avoid using it.
My chocolate cake looks a little different than hers. I’m not sure if I overmixed the dough accidentally. My little mounds had lots of cracks, and while those look great on a muffin, I want my whoopie pies to be smooth.

leaves and flours vegan chocolate pistachio whoopie pies

The pistachio cream is spot on! It was salty and sweet and had just the right amount of texture. I made the cream and went out for a few hours. When I came back, it tasted exponentially different. So I highly recommend making these a few hours early and letting the pistachio flavor develop. I might play with the filling a bit in the future. Natalie suggested adding some cardamom, and I think that's a great idea. Also, if you aren’t using pre-roasted and salted pistachios, I would suggest adding a bit of sea salt to your frosting.
Overall, I really liked this recipe. These were a hit with several friends. However, they were very rich so I would probably make them a little smaller next time. I was feeling a little lazy, so I just plopped down 1/4 cup dough on the cookie sheets, which made about nine ~3" whoopie pies. I also suggest using a cookie scoop if you want really uniformly shaped treats, that are more photogenic than mine!
I also really want to bake more with pistachios. I've made a few pistachio-rose and pistachio-cardamom things, but not recently. Are there any other flavors you think work well with pistachio?

4 comments:

  1. Oh Goddess, chocolate and Pistachio!

    My favorite things in the world! If I was a straight man, Lesbian, or bisexual, I would totally propose to you!

    (I hope that didn't come across as creepy)

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  2. This looks so good Shannon! I definitely want to try this for my mom (she loves, loves pistachios). I've noticed that you also take great photos of your food (when possible - sometimes I'm in a rush too and I forget or it's too dark outside for good lighting)! I mention this because you should totally submit your recipe posts to tastespotting.com! I've done so in the past and if your photo and post gets approved, it gets listed on their site, which has a huuuuge following. You'll get lots of new viewers and hopefully followers! :) Just type in "vegan" in the search result and check out what has been approved on there so far. *Tip: If any of mine don't get approved, it is usually because of "composition," meaning too much of a close up or bad lighting. It usually varies though. Good luck!

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