Peppermint Whoopie Pies

One thing I have been thinking about doing this year is to try out various Christmas type recipes all through the year as I have opportunity. That way, my "want-to-try" recipe list may be whittled down to a manageable size -- or it may be nonexistent because I may have tried all the recipes I want to. (It seems as if there is always at least one new recipe per season that I come across during December, however.)

This year I happened upon a recipe after Christmas which I really wanted to try - Peppermint Whoopie Pies . [Now here, for readers outside the northeastern US, I guess I need to define whoopie pies. They are a soft sandwich cookie, usually (but not limited to) chocolate flavored, with a fluffy white filling between the two cookies. They can come in flavors like banana or pumpkin as well, but chocolate is the usual flavor.] These particular whoopie pies are chocolate with a hint of mint in the cookie, just a regular fluffy white filling, and then the edges of the filling are rolled in crushed peppermints. The photo was absolutely gorgeous and, although I knew it was most unlikely my whoopie pies would look like the picture, I wanted to try the recipe anyway.

I enlisted two of my granddaughters to help me make the recipe for a potluck at church. The 7-year-old crushed the peppermints

while the 9-year-old made the cookie batter

and I dropped it onto the cookie sheets. (I detest making drop cookies, but my cookie scoop didn't work with this batter, so doing it myself was the only way to get relatively uniform cookies.) When the cookies were cooled, the 7-year-old made the filling and filled the cookies, while I trimmed the edges with the crushed candy.

Then we refrigerated them overnight and took them to church the next day.

People did enjoy the whoopie pies -- they really were very tasty -- and we got lots of compliments on them. I'm just not sure I would go to all the trouble of making them again. I definitely wouldn't do so unless I had helpers as I did this time. (And if you are inclined to try the recipe yourself, be advised that it doesn't make "3 dozen sandwich cookies" as specified. I made them small -- dropped by teaspoon rather than tablespoon -- and still only got around 2 dozen or so.) But that's one really great reason for trying out Christmas recipes well ahead of time!