Whoopie Pies

When I was in high school, I worked for a bakery one summer that only made whoopie pies. They were called "Stoddard Twins" because the bakery was owned by a man named Stoddard and the package had two small "twin" whoopie pies in them. During that summer, we made whoopie pies six hours a day, five days a week. When the pies got caught up in the packaging machine and got squished, we got to bring them home. When the cakes came out of the oven looking mutant, we got to eat them on the spot (I must have eaten a dozen a day). When no one was looking, we'd squirt the cream filling into our hands and eat it. I loved those damn things...

One day a few years later, the owner abruptly closed the bakery and the twins were no more. After college and marriage, I decided it was time to make them again. My aunt had worked for the company but when I called her about getting the recipe, she didn't know it and the original baker had moved. So I had to find it the hard way, by trying recipe after recipe to try to recreate the whoopie pies I grew up eating.

It took me twenty years. Seriously. I tried Emeril's pies, too sticky. I tried them from Cooks Illustrated and while they were tasty, they were, well, just wrong. I've had pumpkin whoopie pies, vanilla ones, and even cherry. But I pined for those chocolate twins from the Stoddard Bakery. One day, about a year ago, I decided to try the recipe for whoopie pies in the King Arthur Flour cookbook. This was it!! THE whoopie pie! The cake was dry and chocolaty and puffy, the filling was fluffy, sticky, and vanilla flavored. I called my sister and reported that I'd FINALLY found the right recipe, and after trying it herself, she agreed.