Chocolate espresso peppermint whoopie pies!

I'm a self-proclaimed whoopie pie addict. Maybe it's the speech-language pathologist coming out, but I love saying "whoopie pies". Good ole' plosives. Whatever the reason, whoopie pies are probably #1 on my list when it comes to baking to satisfy my sweet tooth. Portioning is easy because I can make them as big or as small as I want. Individual treats are always fun in my eyes. Hubby and I made a holiday "to-bake" list, and these were at the top. We also thought of red velvet peppermint whoopie pies, because we both loooove red velvet. It was our wedding cake, and I don't care about the haters out there, we love it! Those will come in time though. I had the idea to throw in coffee, which is always a compliment to chocolate in my opinion. We had leftover coffee from the morning, so we ended up using that plus espresso grounds. I also halved the recipe because it was originally for more than we wanted, and we're trying to watch what we eat. We've become gym-goers! Can you believe it!?

Espresso!

The cocoa mixture was up first, and it was a usual blend of ingredients: flour, cocoa, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, baking soda, buttermilk, coffee, salt, and egg. I love homemade chocolate cakes because the cocoa gives it a subtle chocolate flavor rather than overwhelming sweetness.



I use a cookie scoop to "ball" the dough and they've been coming out fairly uniform. Watching these babies bake in the oven was rough...I have the fight the urge to take them out early and take a bite :)

::Insert angels singing::

While the cakes baked, I started on the filling. This is where things went slightly downhill. A mix of cream cheese, butter, and confectioner's sugar would normally make a traditional cream cheese filling. However, we were throwing a holiday spin into these pies, so we added some peppermint syrup. While the taste was friggen awesome, the syrup really thinned out the filling. I've made enough homemade frosting to know to add more confectioner's sugar, but it got to a point where the filling would have been way too sweet if I added more sugar to thicken it up. So I settled for the thinner filling and refrigerated it in hopes it would solidify as it cooled. Not so much. Turns out we should have used peppermint extract rather than syrup. Guess a trip to Penzey's Spices is in order!

While the filling was too thin, these turned out really delicious and Christmas-y! The peppermint wasn't overpowering and the subtle cocoa made a chorus of tastiness in my mouth. Mmm mmm mmm. I love me a good whoopie pie!

• For the Whoopie Pies: (choose your own kind of filling!)

       Makes about 28 mini whoopie pies.

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk (YOu can make your own buttermilk by  combining 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon white vinegar added - let it sit for a minute, and you have buttermilk!)