The most difficult thing about making sandwich cookies, whether you’re making an Oreo-type sandwich with crispy cookies or a whoopie pie with cake-like cookies, if getting all the cookies to be about the same size and shape. When they’re not, your sandwiches will look less than perfect, and you’ll often end up with a cookie leftover that just doesn’t fit well with anything else. My solution to this problem is practice. When you form enough balls of cookie dough, your eye gets used to a certain size. Weighing the dough out works even better, although you still have to shape them into balls.
The Whoopie Pie Pan from Williams-Sonoma makes things even easier. It looks a lot like a muffin-top pan, with shallow rounds for dough that limit how big your cookies can get. All you need to do is place your dough into the rounds and you’ll end up with cookies that are all the same size every time (though it is possible to get different thicknesses if you significantly over or under-estimate the amount of dough you need). The pan is nonstick and can be used with a variety of cookie doughs, from whoopie pies to brownies. It would be great for making ice cream sandwiches, too, and can hold a loose batter together when simply dolloping the batter onto a baking sheet can’t. Still, most of the time you’ll be able to make cookies like these without a specialized pan, but if you make them often, this will definitely speed up the process for you and might be worth the investment!
Tami
January 16, 2010what about a scooper (used for cookies or muffins) no need for an extra pan!