I tried to resist buying an entire book on whoopie pies but yet again the lure of a Book People bargain was far too much for little 'ole me. The front cover is so cute! It's a really well put together book and oh, there are photos for every recipe! Amazing! I can't say I'd ever heard of the Violet bakery before but a quick google threw up a rather beautiful sounding shop in London. Her cupcake flavours sound amazing: Candied Violet, Salted Caramel, French Apricot and Fragolina Grape amongst others. http://www.violetcakes.com/
The range of recipes are just as large as they would be for cupcakes, everything sounds completely edible. There are 6 chapters including Simple and Sweet Whoopie Pies, Topped and Drizzled, Frozen and Chilled and A Few Other Sweet Treats. There are different fillings for each pie, it's really great to have such varied recipes for buttercreams and other creams.
So I decided not to do things by halves and tackled this book with the necessary equipment: a whoopie pie cake tin from Lakeland. Not completely needed but I loved the idea of getting even circles rather than relying on how the cake mixture spread in the oven. The downside to the tin as some people have commented on is that the recipes make 9 pies but the tin only allows you to make 6. Not an issue for me as I usually halve quantites anyway. I decided to make the Salty Caramel Whoopies - combining 2 trends in 1 - salted caramel and whoopie pies!!
They were possibly the most successful sponges I've made, something usually happens to make them fail but these were light and a great texture. I'd say they were more solid than a cupcake but I expected this as they need to hold the filling in the middle.
The suggested filling to go with these pies was the Caramel Swiss Buttercream. I fear buttercream but I followed the recipe and huzzah - it was a success!! This made me love this book! It was quite involved though, I had to make some caramel, then whip up some butter. Next I had to whisk some egg white and sugar over some water on the stove for around 10-15 minutes which was the point where I wasn't quite sure if I was doing it right. It was supposed to be 'fluffy' but it didn't seem like it to me. But, as if by magic, adding the butter and then the caramel I had myself some buttercream! Very happy! It was worth the faff!
I thought they looked pretty good and looked like they did in the photo (maybe a little more even due to the wonder tin). They were a good size, any bigger and they'd be pretty sickly. They held together very well and I'm looking forward to trying out a lot more of the recipes.
I thought I'd try something other than the pies too and made the Prize Peach Cobbler. I always thought a cobbler was more like a crumble but formed into scone shapes but looking at various recipes it seems it can be like that or with a batter as mine was. It was really simple to make and took about an hour to cook.
Sounds good, I haven't tried to make Whoopie Pies yet, but you have definitely made me think of trying them. The Peach Cobbler looks very nice.
ReplyDeleteI have been eyeing this book for a while, I will give in eventually I'm sure it really is very sweet. The whoopie recipes in Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days are great from what I've tried.
ReplyDeleteThe Caramel Swiss Buttercream sounds sooooo good, must try. x