Learning to cherish my failures: faux (but delicious) ice cream whoopie pies

I wanted to make whoopie pies. More precisely ice cream filled whoopie pies. I had never made whoopie pies before and, as usual, I just looked around the web and in my books, looking for a convincing recipe. I found thousands of them and all different from each other. So I came up with mine.

Or at least I tried. At first, the disaster! The batter was obviously too liquid and the result was that the whoopie pies once in the oven lost completely shape. Here is the proof…they totally look like flat pancakes!

But I decided not to give up on them! I added some flour hoping that would help them keep their shape and it seems it worked. The second batch was better. They were still weird though. I don’t think whoopie pies are supposed to have the texture of a sponge cake, do they? Well, mine were like tiny sponge cakes L Don’t take me wrong, they were good and still pretty cute. I made them coffee flavored with vanilla ice cream filling. The contrast of tastes was very good. But still, I don’t think I can call these “whoopie pies” and cross them out of my wish-to-bake-soon list. 

Do you guys have any suggestion or family recipe for fools proof whoopie pies? I would love to hear about it!

Note: the first few totally unshaped whoopie pies were eaten just like that….plain or with some ice cream on a side. I'm learning to love my failures J

Fake whoopie pies

Ingredients

210 gr (1 and 2/3 cups or 7.5 oz) all purpose flour

5 gr (1 tsp) baking powder

1 gr (1/4 tsp) salt

1 gr (1/4 tsp) baking soda

85 gr (6 tbsp) unsalted butter

200 gr (1 cup or 7.1 oz) sugar

3 large eggs

1 ml (1/4 tsp) vanilla extract

80 ml (1/3 cup or 2.6 fl oz) milk

60 ml (1/4 cup or 2 oz) coffee (espresso)

vanilla (or other flavor) ice cream

Preheat the oven to 375F degrees and prepare two baking pans with parchment paper.

Sift the flour, the baking powder, the salt, and the baking soda together and set aside.

Beat the butter and the sugar in medium bowl until you obtain a light and fluffy cream. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mix the coffee, the vanilla and the milk together and add to the batter in thirds, alternating with the flour mixture, until combined.

Spoon the batter on the baking pan and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges start to get golden.

Cool them on a cooling rack. Before spreading the ice cream, put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes so that they get hard enough to make the spread easier. Keep in the freezer until it’s time to serve them.

Have a sweet day.