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Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Whoopie pies go seasonal, with pumpkin cookies and two different cream cheese fillings—lemon and maple nutmeg.
Course Dessert
Servings 15 or 16 3-inch Whoopie Pies

Ingredients

For the cookies:

  • 3 cups flour
  • 2-1/4 cups dark brown sugar (packed—see Kitchen Notes)
  • 1 cup grapeseed or vegetable oil
  • 1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree—not pumpkin pie filling
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/8 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder

For the filling:

  • 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
  • 4 ounces unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 3 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

For the half-recipe of lemon-flavored filling:

  • 2 teaspoons lemon zest chopped fine
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice

For the half-recipe of maple nutmeg-flavored filling:

  • 1-1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
  • a pinch (okay, 1/16 teaspoon or maybe less) freshly grated nutmeg

Instructions

  • Make the cookies. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper—you won’t need oil or butter.
  • In a large bowl, using an electric hand mixer, mix together the canned pumpkin, oil, brown sugar, eggs, cinnamon, ginger , vanilla, allspice and salt. Mix until there are no lumps.
  • Add the baking soda and baking powder. Stir and then add the flour in batches. The dough should be smooth and a little glossy.
  • Drop spoons of batter onto the cookie sheet, leaving about 1-1/2 inches between blobs. Each of mine was about 1-1/2 tablespoon of dough. The dough is very sticky and a little fussy to work, and at times seems to be feeling its way along your hands, and you will have an adventure getting it from the spoon to the sheet. Keep a wet cloth at hand to minimize the damage. (Note to self: move laptop away from work area.)
  • Slide the sheets into the hot oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes depending on your oven. I did two sheets at a time, three batches. When done, the cookies should be firm to the touch and your tester should come out clean. Lift the cookies off the sheets right away with a spatula and cool completely on racks.
  • Make the filling. While cookies are cooling, put the butter in a big bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer until fluffy, about three minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add the cream cheese. Beat again for about two minutes. Add the vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time. Scrape down the bowl now and then. Pretty quickly, it will take on that lavish look of cream cheese icing, and even if you have done this a hundred times before you will think: say, that was easy! This recipe yields about 2-1/2 cups of cream cheese filling.
  • Make the two flavors of filling. Divide the filling in half into two smallish bowls. In one bowl, add the maple syrup (the filling will have a subtle maple flavor) and grate in the nutmeg—go easy on it. In the other bowl, stir in the 2 teaspoons of lemon zest and the lemon juice.
  • Assemble the whoopie pies. Prepare a plate or surface to hold them—I ended up using pizza pans. If you are making two different fillings, then divide the cookies into two and use two different sheets to sort them. There’s not a lot of visual difference between the fillings, and it’s easy to lose track of which is which (see Kitchen Notes).
  • Hold one cookie flat in your hand, flat bottom side up, dollop on a generous tablespoon of filling, then gently place another cookie on top. Don’t squeeze it. Settle it in place firmly.
  • Slide the whoopie pie-laden sheets into the fridge for a little while to firm them up. That’s it. Done. Store finished whoopie pies in a single layer in airtight containers in the fridge.

Kitchen Notes

Brown sugar. Before you add the brown sugar to the batter, eyeball it for lumps. If it is looking like there are hard stubborn lumps, try to crush them and break them up.
What would I do differently? I would add a tiny drop of yellow food coloring to the lemon filling, because honestly, it was really hard to tell the difference between these two flavors visually. I might also try making the cookies smaller (with a corresponding shorter baking time).
What if you only want one icing flavor? Use the whole filling recipe and double the flavorings.
Whoopie? How did they get that name? Supposedly, because that’s what kids would say when offered one.
Use real maple syrup, not "maple-flavored” stuff. We still have some of the superb maple syrup we got at beautiful Moondance Gardens in upstate New York during sugaring time—but use any kind that you have available.
And finally, fun with cats. After I prepared the lemon zest, I went in the living room and patted the more scornful of our cats. Now you smell like lemon, I said to her.