Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Filling

Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling

A recipe arrived in my inbox on Friday that could only make magic with that one last pumpkin perched on my counter.  My favorite newsletters/blog from thekitchn.com was highlighting the joys of Thanksgiving treats, namely pumpkin-derived treats.  And standing out in their collage of autumnal food porn was the Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pie from Brown Eyed Baker.  It was destiny.

Now I'm including the recipe below because I made some modifications - as usual.  So what happened?  Well, the first problem was that I ignored the keyword "chilled" in front of "pumpkin puree".  I literally steamed my pumpkin, pureed and dumped it directly in with the wet ingredients.  The sugar melted from its fluffy state and became an egg-sugar-pumpkin soup.  There was really no recovery from its liquid state, so I tossed in the dry ingredients to see how bad the damage was.  It was bad.  It was like cake batter, not cookie dough.

Melted sugar-egg-pumpkin batter

Lesson:  Don't be so impatient! Cook and chill pumpkin before starting the recipe.

So if, in spite of my warnings, you do this anyway, this was my solution:  Add another egg.  Add another cup of flour.  Add 1/4 cup of sugar.  So the recipe below is the Oops! recipe.  I did test out some of the liquid batter to see how it baked compared to the Oops batter, and I saw little difference, honestly.  The added egg/flour only managed to fluff it up by a mere 1-2mm.  No where near the fluffiness of the ones on the BEB blog.  The flavor was not compromised.



You'll also note that I halved the filling.  I seriously had 1/2 bowl left from the original recipe, so unless you want to get diabetes in one sitting or toss out half your food stuffs, stick with the recipe below.  I also felt that the tart cream cheese heavily overwhelmed the maple syrup, so I kicked the maple up a notch.

Maple cream cheese filling whipped up in the KitchenAid

Pumpkin Whoopie Pie Dough:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups chilled pumpkin puree
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Maple-Cream Cheese Filling

1.5 cups powdered sugar
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
5 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  You can brush and flip the parchment to cycle through, since I ended up putting 6 professional-sized baking sheets-worth of cookies inside and ran out of parchment.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.

3. In your mixer with the whisk attachment, whip the granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, and oil together. Next add the pumpkin puree (when its chilled!), eggs and vanilla.

4. Lastly, gradually add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture.  You may want the shield on your mixer bowl since it tends to splash up a lot of flour in the process of mixing.

5. Use a small cookie scoop to deposit mounds of dough on the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.

6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.  They'll puff up a bit and look a little golden on the edges.  If you lift the underside of a cookie, it will be just beginning to color.  You may want to test a cookie at this point also, just to make sure it's baked thoroughly.

Now I brought these puppies into work, since that's where I pawn off all my treats before I gluttonously eat themself.  Best response yet!  Here is a selection of the e-mails and verbal comments I was made!

"I went home last night feeling so terrible because I didn't tell you how amazing the whoopie pies were!"  "Me too!  I meant to e-mail you and felt so bad that I didn't give you feedback!" - Meridith + Dov
"You should seriously consider opening your own bakery. They are delicious. Thanks for sharing." -David
"Your pastries were SO delicious yesterday." - Chris (and I don't think he was just sucking up to me because I'm his new boss)
"I went back for seconds but... they were all gone!" and holds up the empty tupperware container with a sad look. - Mitchell