A traditional whoopie pie is a pair of cake-like chocolate cookies sandwiching a fluffy, marshmallow frosting center. It’s a good combination, to be sure, but whoopie pies are a lot more interesting when you mix things up with different flavors and, fortunately, it is very easy to add some flavor to a whoopie pie. These Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Raspberry Buttercream pair soft, chocolate cake and a fruity raspberry filling. Flavor-wise, it’s a great combination, but the bright colors in the finished dessert make this a lot of fun, too.
The cake portion of the whoopie pies is a simple, chocolate cake that has a generous amount of cocoa powder in it to ensure that each pie has a strong chocolate flavor. They’re moist and tender, but they are a little sturdier than chocolate cupcake would be so that they are easy to handle when filling and serving. The raspberry filling is a simple American buttercream – butter, vanilla and confectioners’ sugar – spiked with some raspberry puree. You can buy the puree at some stores, but I make batches by defrosting frozen berries and pureeing them in the food processor, then straining out the seeds. It takes a little extra time to make a puree, but they pack a lot of flavor and the raspberry really turned this buttercream a beautiful shade of pink. Chocolate and raspberry is a good flavor combination in any kind of dessert and this one is no exception.
The recipe makes about 16 generously sized whoopie pies, so they’re good for serving to a crowd or at a party. I think they’re an especially good Valentine’s Day treat because of the lovely pink filling inside of the pies. They keep well for several days when stored in an airtight container and they can even be frozen if you want to tuck one or two away for another day.
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Nonstick parchment paper is a great tool to have in the kitchen. Perfect for lining cookie sheets and cake pans, parchment paper makes cleanup easy and prevents your baked goods from sticking to your pans. Parchment paper is best used on flat surfaces (such as the bottom of pans), but there are things that I bake that I like to be able to lift out of the pan for cooling, slicing and serving. These include coffee cakes, brownies and bar cookies, and when making these types of baked goods, I typically line my pans with aluminum foil and lightly grease it. I can lift the foil right out of the pan (I wrap it up, over the sides) and my baked goods don’t stick.
Reynolds Wrap has managed to combine aluminum foil and parchment paper into one product, their new Nonstick Pan Lining Paper. This paper has foil on one side and parchment on the other. The idea is that the foil allows the paper to conform to the shape of the pan – sides and all – but the parchment paper gives it a nonstick finish with no extra greasing required. This product is a little more expensive than both foil and parchment are, but I picked up a roll recently to see how it performed.
The paper feels heavy, much thicker than either plain aluminum foil or parchment paper. It pressed easily into my pans (sheet pans with shallow sides and deeper, rectangular baking dishes), wrapping into the corners and up the sides easily and staying exactly where I contoured it to my pan, although I noticed that it didn’t have quite as much flexibility as plain aluminum foil. The parchment side of the paper worked just like regular parchment, so it definitely didn’t need to be greased. Overall, I was happy with the performance, but lightly greased aluminum foil works just as well for most baking applications. I would choose this for more heavy duty baking (like lasagna, which Reynolds Wrap actually recommends) where I would think that foil alone might not hold up to the job.
Cooling racks are an important tool in a baker’s kitchen because they allow you to cool down baked goods quickly when the come out of the oven. Wire cooling racks with a grid pattern are my go-to style of cooling rack because they offer support for everything from big cakes to small cookies as they cool. The only problem with sheet-style cooling racks is that they take up a lot of counter space and when you’re making multiple batches of cookies (or have a small kitchen) that loss of counter space can be a real problem. This is where a gadget like the Baker’s 4-Tier Cooling Rack from Linden Sweden. This four tiered rack allows you to stack your sheet pans and cooling racks vertically, quadrupling your cooling space and leaving you with a wide open counter to work on.
The rack is made from powder-coated steel and it is both strong and durable. Each of the racks is more than strong enough to handle a full-sized pizza stone, so handling light aluminum cookie sheets and baking trays is no problem. The racks also adjust to different heights to accommodate pans of different sizes. In addition to saving you counter space, this rack folds up flat (stands 13 inches high when open, and folds flat to 22 x10 x 1 inch) when it is not in use, so it doesn’t take up much cabinet space, either.
When it comes to indulgence, it’s hard to beat a molten-center chocolate cake. Also known as a chocolate lava cake, these individually sized desserts typically have a liquid chocolate center that oozes out of the warm cake like hot fudge when you dig into one with a fork.
These Chocolate Cherry Lava Cakes were inspired by those cherry cordial chocolates that used to be so common in chocolate assortments. I used to love those for the burst of cherry that you would get when you bit into one and the experience is similar here – although I have to say that these are much more delicious than most of those cherry candies were!
Some molten-center chocolate cakes call for underbaking your cake batter to create a soft center. In my version of Molten Center Chocolate Cakes, I make a small ball of chocolate ganache and place it in the center of the unbaked cake. As the cake bakes, that ganache center liquifies and you end up with a completely baked cake with a soft, fudgy center. For this cherry variation, I added a splash of Kirsch (cherry brandy) to the cake batter and added some cherry preserves to the centers of the cake on top of those balls of ganache. The result is a warm cake with a slight cherry aroma and a burst of chocolate and cherry inside. Choose good quality preserves (I used Bonne Maman) that have chunks of fruit in them for the best results.
The finished cakes have a light cherry scent and a burst of chocolate and cherry inside. The Kirsch contributes to the cherry aroma, but you can easily omit it from the recipe without making any other changes if you prefer not to use it (or don’t have it). You can also make variations on this using different types of preserves, so long as you choose a fruit that goes well with chocolate!
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