Whoopie Gluttony! and a post-script question...

In the summer of 2009, I moved to Toronto for graduate school, bringing my relationship with my boyfriend into that hellish realm of long-distance. During my time in Toronto, or TO, I would travel to Michigan to spend time with my wonderful man. During my visits and throughout my time now spent living with him in this fair state, I've come across something peculiar; whoopie pies. In all my travels and lives spent in Canada and Minnesota, I'd never even heard of these. During this same time, I have also not eaten one since the majority of places who offer baked goods only provide crisco, cheap ingredients, and a severe lack of love.

So I made my own. Whoopie! (this whoopie is brought to you in part by...)

Look at it! Just look at it! What a beautiful machine that will help with my carpel tunnel and provide a far-from-endless amount of entertainment! So, crass lady, what did you do with it?

I mixed some shit.

First I did the standard creaming of wet things. I took the shortening (something I hardly ever use), butter, sugars and mixed them right up without breaking a sweat, then adding the eggs and vanilla. I also got to learn the valuable lesson of scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl...

Whoa, look at her go! Whhhoooooopieee!
I'll stop that now.
I then mixed the dry ingredients and made the filling, adding the dry to the buttery business in the electronic mixer.

This is essentially cake batter made thicker so that you can make drops of it onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. You then just pop them in the oven and make what are really just tiny cakes. While they're baking, make the filling and get ready to spread some cheesy, fatty, sugary joy all over your creation.

Mmmmmmm. This mixture is cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla, and I added some maple syrup because, well, that should be added to just about everything. Then once the pies had cooled, the smearing began and overly large and delicious whoopie pies came to be.

When making the chocolate halves, I used a standard tablespoon for dolloping the cake batter. I think these would have been perfect if I'd used standard teaspoons instead. They were very yummy, but were a bit too much. As far as taste goes though, I certainly brought everyone to flavor country.

Post-script: I would really like to make this blog popular and while I have been researching how, I would greatly appreciate any feedback you might have to help me improve this. Please comment below with your suggestions and criticisms!