Mint Whoopie Pies

These are ridiculously good. I made them smaller than a typical whoopie pie. This holiday season i have done a lot of 'minis' in an attempt to promote portion control...This has had limited success ("well.. they ARE small..so i can have another...") The cake part of this.. i wanted to eat the batter straight from the bowl. So i consider it a great success that i managed to get to the bake. Consider yourselves warned.

For the Cakes:

1/1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup plus 1 tbs milk

2 tbs strong coffee

1/2 tsp ground coffee

For the Filling:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup shortening

2 cups powdered sugar

3/4 cup marshmallow topping

1/2 bag andes creme de menthe baking chips (melted)

1/3-1/2 cup milk

Topping:

crushed peppermint candies

green sugar (optional)

the butter sugar and eggs, then add the vanilla and oil. beat this until creamy

all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Pour the milk into a measuring cup and add the coffee (for those of you wondering, the coffee brings out the chocolate flavor, but wont really be discernible)

Stir in half the dry mixture, then half the milk mixture ,then the remainder of the dry , then the last of the milk... Adding the dry and wet ingredients in parts helps incorporate everything thoroughly. Watch your batter develop into a lovely chocolaty yum. you have my permission to taste it at this time , just so you know what an excellent cook you are =)

spoon these onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 until set (mine took 10 minutes). Cool these on a wire rack.

* I suggested a cookie scoop for this because you want these to be uniform in size to make matching them up easier.

I neglected to get a picture of all the ingredients together.. possibly because i was kind of making it up as i went along. I knew i wanted a mint filling because standard whoopie pie filling is just kind of "meh" to me.. but I love chocolate mint!

melt your chips, soften your butter, beat everything together using the milk to adjust the thickness to your liking..

I matched my cookies up first .. then put one scoop of filling and smashed the top on.

I crushed my peppermints and put them on a plate. i rolled the edge of the filled pies in this for added flavor and a festive color. you could also leave these plain as pictured on the right. i think the crushed peppermint added a nice texture though.

(you will note my cake surfaces got a bit marred because i made the cakes a day ahead of the filling and tried to store them between sheets of parchment - rookie move)

As always if you like this instructable, please give it a vote . thanks!