Pastry
Mix in food processor (can be done by hand, if you roll that way):
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup lard (or shortening)
1 tsp salt

Add all at once: 2 eggs + enough milk to make 3/4 cup liquid.

Pulse a few times until dough comes together, forming ball by hand if necessary.

Assembly
Roll 1/2 of the dough into 11×15″ pan. I’m lazy, so I just press it into the pan. Sprinkle with 1 tbsp minute tapioca.

Combine 1 cup sugar with 2 tbsp tapioca, and sprinkle over base. Spread 4-5 cups finely chopped rhubarb over sugar. Sprinkle with 1 cup sugar and 1 tbsp tapioca. Cover with remaining pastry. Again, I’m lazy, so I don’t roll it, I break it up into little bits with my fingers and spread it more or less evenly over the top.

Topping (this is the best part)
Combine:
1/2 cup margarine (unsalted butter won’t hurt here)
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups sliced almonds
1 pkg Dr Oetker’s vanilla sugar (using a whole package even if you’re halving the recipe won’t hurt here, either)

Cook gently 2 minutes or use microwave (basically to melt the butter and get it all nice and mixed). Spread over platz.
Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes, then 300 for another 30-40.

Excuse me while I go dig a piece out of the fridge and warm it up a touch.

When I saw the picture for this recipe in Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, I imagined that after these were made for the shoot, the people involved got to taste them, and someone got so carried away that at some point they realized that someone had already bitten into the last one… so they photographed it that way.

Whoopie Pie Mise en Place

I didn’t get any pictures of the process. I guess I was in too much of a hurry to get these done and ready to eat. Basically, you beat together the sugar, butter, and eggs, then beat in the melted cooled chocolate. Then add the dry ingredients, alternating with the buttermilk. I didn’t use buttermilk because I didn’t have any, but I substituted regular milk with a bit of lemon juice. Scoop the batter out onto a cookie sheet, then bake.

Now, the frosting/filling.

Marshmallow Cream Mise en Place

So, you make a meringue, then add a hot sugar/corn syrup mixture to “cook” the meringue. Then after it’s mostly cooled, beat in a pat of butter and vanilla.

Meringue with butter and vanilla beaten in

Cool that in the fridge for a few minutes while you beat together some butter and icing sugar. Beat the two mixtures together.

Adding the butter and icing sugar

The frosting/filling tastes like a rich vanilla ice cream, only better. The cake part has a really lovely texture. Because of the dark brown sugar, there’s a hint of molasses in with your chocolate, which is great. It’s still not quite Goody Shop Whoopie Pies, though.

Delicious!

I thought I’d share my Mom’s recipe, which is a bit closer to what I grew up with. It’s from a hand-written spiral bound notebook Mom gave me when I moved away for grad school. The recipes are copied from her hand-written cookbook of recipes that she has been accumulating over her lifetime. Sorry, no weights, but you can probably figure them out if you want them. As you can tell by quantities, this makes a whole lot more than the recipe from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mom managed to wheedle this recipe out of the guy who ran the Goody Shop.

Whoopie Pies

Cream:
1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla

Sift:
4 cups flour
1 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda

Add mixture of cocoa to creamed mixture alternately with 1 cup cold water and 1 cup thick sour milk. Add slightly more flour if milk is not too thick. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake in hot oven 15 minutes or until cookie springs back.

Whoopie Pie Filling

Beat 2 egg whites with 3 tsp vanilla, 2 cups icing sugar. Add 1 1/2 cups shortening and continue beating until smooth. Sandwich between cookies.

1 egg white
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp dutch processed cocoa (optional)

Beat the egg white until frothy, then add the cream of tartar. Beat to medium peaks, then gradually add the sugar, beating to stiff peaks. If desired, add a tablespoon or so of cocoa for colour. Pipe into a variety of round and tall shapes on parchment paper. You’re piping the stems and tops of the mushrooms separately. A variety of heights of stems works well (between 1/4 and 1 inch tall, or so). Bake in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven, for 1 hr. Turn the oven off and leave door closed for 1 more hour. You’re trying to dry them out more than you are cooking them. Store in an airtight container once cool & crispy.

Close to when ready to serve, take a paring knife and hollow out a small crevice in the middle of the bottom of the caps. This crevice should be about the width of your stems. Pipe a bit of ganache (for me, this was easy, I had some leftover from the biscuit roulade) into the crevice, and stick the stems into it. Don’t do this too far in advance, or your meringues will absorb the moisture from the ganache and start to get soggy. Dust the tops with some cocoa and/or icing sugar for ‘dirt’ & ‘snow’.