Making Whoopie

You may recall that Sister of Pyjamas gave me some recipe books for Christmas. Baking books. Funny.

Rarely, if ever,  do I turn out anything that involves using flour and eggs and the term "folding" that ultimately looks like the picture in the book. I don't fold . I beat the crud out of things. For me , baking is like being a Gladiator. We fight to the death, and it's almost always the baked goods that lose.

One of my goals for 2012 is to work my way through one of those books and cook at least half the recipes. You'll notice I didn't add the word "successfully" to the goal. But somewhere inside my head that's what I'm aiming for. My mantra for 2012 is there is no such word as "cant". There must be an inner Julia Child or Nigella in me somewhere.

So, last week I girded my loins and made my first batch of  whoopie pies. Chocolate.  And according to my recipe book this is what they are supposed to look like.

And this is what most of mine looked like . Frisbees. Crunchy Frisbees. They were too flat. Aren't these things supposed to be  puffy like cake?

I took them to Claire's last Saturday and tried to feed them to my unsuspecting Farmers Wife Quilt group. Only Loz and I were brave enough to eat them. They did taste really good though once I'd put so much buttercream in them I could feel my arteries hardening every single time I took a bite.

Not  to be deterred by less than 100% success today I decided it was time to give them another go. Maybe mastering Whoopie Pies takes more than one try.  I settled on Jaffa Whoopie Pies because I had plenty of last weeks chocolate butter cream left over. On a side note I put just about everything in my freezer including leftover icing but I'm just not good at labelling stuff. I know what it is ..but nobody else does. It's made for some hilarious moments when someone pulls out chocolate icing thinking it's gravy.

Thankfully no piping was involved today . The recipe said I could just put tablespoon fulls on my biscuit trays. That saved me having to wipe cookie dough off my ceiling which is where some of it ended from last weeks great piping accident. I'm not very coordinated.

And lookee here...

Fooled you didn't I? This is what they are meant to look like. Mine didn't look anything like that. 

Mine were mutant sized. The size of baseballs. They had too much puff like cake. And my jaffas wouldn't crush properly because it's currently about 110F.  They just kind of melted into one another and I had to push them into the icing. 

While Mr. P was appreciative and made Mmmmm noises while munching on one, I  just can't shake the feeling that I'm Goldilocks. She was a fussy perfectionist cow too. Next week I'm hoping my whoopie pies will be just right. I may give the chocolate ones a  miss and move onto something else since chocolate  appears to be waging a personal vendetta against me. 

I immediately reverted to something I know I'm good at and I redeemed myself with the roast duck I did for dinner....sublime. 

PS. Don't tell Little P - his favourite animal in the "Old McDonald had a farm"song is the Duck. I'd hate for him to have to spend years in therapy.