Halloween Pumpkin Whoopie Pies | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Halloween pumpkin whoopy pies. That's right, these stuffed cookie sandwiches would be an amazing treat even if we didn't decorate them. But once I show you how easy that is to do, I hope you give it a try. And no, you don't need any artistic skills, as you'll see me prove in this video. And to get started, we'll put together an extremely easy cookie batter that starts with some all-purpose flour to which we will add some salt, some baking powder, and it's good for baking soda. And then we'll finish up our dry ingredients with some cinnamon, some ground ginger, and some ground clove. And then what we'll do is take a whisk and give this a thorough mixing for about a half a minute, just to make sure everything's evenly combined. And once it is, we'll set that aside. And we'll move on to the wet ingredients, which is going to start with some pure pumpkin puree, which is definitely not the same thing as pumpkin pie filling, so don't use that. And then what we'll do is toss in some brown sugar, one large whole egg, plus a generous amount of vegetable oil. And then we'll take a whisk and give this a mix until it's evenly combined and perfectly smooth. And then once that's been accomplished, before we add our dry ingredients, I'm going to squeeze in two or three drops of optional orange food coloring. Since I would love it if these cookies are a nice pumpkin orange after they're cooked. I know the batter does look kind of orange now, but once we stir the flour in, it's going to lighten up and after it bakes, it's going to be more of a tan than an orange, which is not going to be ugly. It's just not going to be pumpkin colored, which is what we're going after here. But either way, we'll whisk our dry and wet ingredients together to form a fairly loose cookie batter, which is now ready to transfer onto a line sheet pan. And for that, I'm going to use one of these sorbet scoops. So hopefully I can portion the same amount of batter per cookie, but you could do the same thing by transferring on rounded tablespoons. And since our batter isn't very thick, these are going to kind of form round shapes anyway. But to do a little finetuning, we can always take a wet finger and move that batter around a little bit. And besides maybe making these a little bit rounder, it's not a bad idea that these get flattened out a little bit since I think that improves the shape of the cookie. And when we do the side with our Halloween design, we'll have a little more surface area to work with. Oh, and don't worry about the bumps and depressions. Those are going to smooth out when these bake, which is what we're doing next by transferring these into the upper center of a 350°ree oven for about 18 minutes or until the outside edges start to turn barely golden brown. And they hopefully look like this. And then what we'll do is let these cool on the pan for about 10 to 15 minutes before we eventually transfer those onto a cooling rack. And once we've done our undesigned cookies, which are going to be the bottoms, we will prep another pan that are going to be the tops. And these will be the ones that get our Halloween designs, no matter what those might be. And all we need to do for that is to take some extra batter and squeeze in a generous amount of brown or black food coloring. And we'll go ahead and give that a mix and then transfer it into a piping bag with a very fine tip attached. And if you don't have piping bags, you know the trick. just transfer it into a plastic zip top bag and snip off a tiny bit of the plastic from the corner and you'll be able to do this exact same thing. And as far as my Halloween design repertoire, I'm pretty good at doing a spiderweb, which is what I'm going to use for half of these. And then, as you'll see, once my spiderwebs were done, I attempted a jacko'lantern pumpkin face, which I'm not going to say I was good at. In fact, I was definitely not good at it. But the good news is, as you'll see, no matter how bad our design looks on the raw cookie, once they're baked, you're going to be pretty shocked at just how good they look. And of course, there's so many different designs you could do, right? Ghost shapes, vampire fangs, maybe a witch on a broom, or a good oldfashioned devil's pitchfork. But anyway, you decide. I mean, you guys are after all the coastal elites of these Amish treats. But no matter what you go with, once those are piped, we will bake these at the same time for the same time. And as promised, despite my questionable artistic skills, I think these come out looking really nice. In fact, my scary jacko'lanterns might be a little too terrifying. But anyway, we'll let our cookies cool. At which point, I transferred them to this rack where we will let them cool completely, and then we'll proceed to the filling and sandwiching step. Oh, and by the way, I actually had enough batter to make 10 of these, which means 20 cookies total. So, make sure you're following the directions in the written recipe. Since I found out through this experiment, we can get more on the pan than eight and still have enough batter left over for the design. And that's it. Once our cookies are set, we can move on to our cream cheese frosting filling, which is nothing more than cream cheese that we'll combine with some room temperature unsalted butter, as well as a little bit of milk, some pure real vanilla extract, and then last but not least, a little touch of powdered sugar. And then we'll take our electric mixer or a whisk if we want a little bit of a workout. And we will mix this up until it's smooth and creamy. And once it eventually is, I highly recommend you chill this a little bit so it firms up a touch before you try to pipe it, which I may or may not have actually done, but it really does make it easier to work with. Oh, by the way, another production note, this is actually a double batch of the filling since I had plans to use it for something else. So, the ingredients in the recipe will be haved, so don't let the amount you see here throw you off. And then to finish up, we'll transfer as much of the filling as we want on one of the bottom cookies, but don't go all the way to the edge. And you'll see why in a minute. And that's it. We'll top it with one of our design cookies. Oh, and this moment of hesitation, you see, was me trying to figure out which top perfectly match this bottom. But if you portioned yours evenly, it is really not going to matter. So, just pick one. And once the top's on, what we'll do is give these a gentle squeeze until that filling pushes out just to the edge. And that's it. We formed a perfect looking pumpkin whoopy pie Halloween edition. And that's it. We'll go ahead and do the exact same thing to the rest. And then even if you did successfully fill these without chilling the frosting, I highly recommend you refrigerate these finished cookies before you try to serve them. But did I take my own advice? No, I did not. And I went ahead and served these up as is because I could not wait and I was starving. Plus, one of the voices from the jacko'lanterns was in my head telling me to eat them. Oh, and fair warning, if you pile these up on each other, they tend to stick a little bit, which I guess is technically a problem, but I think we'd all agree cookie problems aren't like regular problems. And even though that filling wasn't chilled and it was too soft, they still really were amazing. Okay, besides looking super cool and terrifyingly adorable, the cookie itself is very light and tender and tastes like pumpkin pie. And while you could just do a simple filling like a whipped cream, I think the cream cheese frosting is a perfect pairing. But like I said, for best results, you definitely want to refrigerate these before you serve them. So, after getting my fix with this first one, that's exactly what I did. And once chilled, I enjoyed another one. And I know nobody wants to wait for cookies to chill before you can eat them. But if you do, both the taste and texture will be significantly better. So do your best to get that done. But no matter what temperature you serve these or what holiday designs you go with, this is an absolutely delicious, easy to make, visually appealing treat, which is why I really do hope you give these a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always in joy. Oh boy.