Pistachio Whoopie Pies

To anticipate people asking the question I've been asked all day, whoopie pies are an 'American baked good that may be considered either a cookie, pie, or cake [...] with a sweet, creamy filling or frosting sandwiched between them'.

And, what's more, I trudged through this to get the ingredients for you, my lovely readers:

So when I got home, I huddled up with soup and when I was all warmed up, I started to make a mess cook the little babies using my friend's whoopie pie maker which she left at my house and said I could use!

Here we go.
Whoopie Pies
Ingredients:

• 300g self-raising flour
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2tsp salt
• 125g butter, room temperature
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1T almond extract
• 150g pistachios, finely chopped
• ~180ml buttermilk/yoghurt/milk - I used a mixture

Method:

1. Stir together the dry ingredients in a small-ish bowl.
2. Cream butter and sugar. When smooth, add eggs and almond extract.
3. Gradually add dry ingredients and 90g of pistachios.
4. Add buttermilk, yoghurt or milk until mixture has dropping consistency of American pancakes (not French) if you are using a whoopie pie maker machine. Otherwise, add less yoghurt so you can roll out and cut into circles the mixture before baking at around 180 degrees Celsius/355degrees Fahrenheit.

Filling
Ingredients:

• 100g cream cheese
• 1 lemon, juice and zest
• 100g mini marshmallows
• Good knob butter
• loads of icing sugar

Method:

1. Cream cream cheese, lemon juice and lemon zest.
2. Melt butter and marshmallows in a pan over low heat. When smooth, add to cream cheese mixture and combine well.
3. Add icing sugar until thick and won't fall out of edges of sandwich!

 To assemble:

1. Depending on the size of your whoopie pies, you can either cut them in half and place filling inside, or put two thinner whoopie pies together. I tried both and couldn't quite figure out the perfect way. Think it'll take some more practicing with 'my' fun new machine!
2. Pipe around the edge and a bit into the middle. (I used a piping bag, although an offset spatula or pallet knife would have worked as long as the cakes were well cooked - sometimes mine were too soft and this technique broke them apart.)
3. Squish the sandwiches together until a teeny bit of filling is visible and then roll the cookies in the remaining chopped pistachios.

And without the filling, flipped over halway through baking, they are imbued with a texture more akin to pancakes or griddle cakes than cake cake, which was a fun and less rich variation to have with afternoon tea!