I love being from Maine. And one of our best exports is the whoopie pie! A handheld chocolate cake with frosting inside. Like carrying around a slice of cake in your hand. I grew up eating them for dessert and associate them strongly with being home in Maine. One of my family’s favorite restaurants has the best Maine whoopie pies, kept on the counter next to the cash register, wrapped in plastic packaging. They have several basic flavors – classic vanilla marshmallow cream inside of chocolate cake domes. Then they have chocolate with peanut butter. A lemon and blueberry. And a vanilla + vanilla. I would personally never go for vanilla + vanilla, but you do you. 

The Best Maine Whoopie Pies Recipe

My mom’s favorite bakery serves chocolate and peppermint whoopie pies in the winter, which are incredible. But – I will say, most of the Maine whoopie pies I’ve had are too sweet. If you look at old, “classic” recipes, a lot of the filling recipes have lard and way too much powdered sugar. The first time I made them was with my friend in high school at her house. I remember her pulling out the lard and reading how much we needed, and I stared at it, horrified. Why use lard and not butter? It tasted absolutely disgusting. The flavor wouldn’t leave my mouth for hours. So, when developing my recipe, my goal was to keep it from being too sweet. The cake portion holds back a little on the sugar and holds an intense chocolatey flavor. Which is accentuated by strong coffee and brown butter. 

I adapted my cake recipe from the recipe on Handle The Heat. I browned my stick of butter beforehand and let it sit on the counter so it would come back to spreadable consistency. This ups the richness and darkness of flavor. I also add a little bit of coffee to loosen the batter slightly so it’s spreadable. I wanted to make a new twist on classic Maine whoopie pies, so my recipe includes spreading the entire batter thinly over a sheet pan. This is in lieu of scooping out the traditional cookie-shaped mounds to bake. I’ve never seen a square whoopie pie recipe, so in the spirit of thinking outside the box, I made one! I cut the cake into rectangles after baking which elevates the presentation slightly. 

My Whipped Caramel Whoopie Pie Frosting Recipe

I also developed an incredible filling for these Maine whoopie pies that I’m really proud of. A lot of frostings are way too sweet. I almost never use powdered sugar in frostings, and I always opt for a meringue based buttercream if I can. But, those recipes also use a TON of butter, which is both fattening and wasteful. I don’t find that it drastically improves the texture, either. You can achieve a super silky frosting by whipping cream. So, you just need cold cream. Which led me to investigate the ways you can whip mixtures with high amounts of cream into silky frostings. 

I’ve made whipped chocolate ganache plenty of times, and it’s my favorite trick for making chocolate frosting. It’s also easier, more chocolatey, and less ingredients. You traditionally whip meringue with butter and add melted chocolate for a good buttercream. But butter is ultimately just whipped cream that’s been separated from the buttermilk. Therefore, you can just whip flavored cream to make frosting. Whipped chocolate ganache is just hot cream that’s melted dark chocolate. Let it cool and it whips into a beautiful, light frosting. And it’s packed with chocolate flavor.

Painting Whoopie Pies and Creativity

So, for my best whoopie pie recipe, I decided to try out whipped caramel, which is essentially the same concept as whipped ganache. With a cup of heavy cream added to your caramel, it’s high in fat. Once it’s cooled and whipped, it becomes a pure caramel frosting. No extra sugar needed. No butter needed. I just love the classic combination of chocolate and caramel here. I add a small amount of dark chocolate to my caramel, which melts beautifully alongside a small amount of butter and a cup of heavy cream. Because the chocolate is dark (and I mean DARK), it really cuts through the sweetness and balances out the flavor. Add sea salt and it’s pretty delicious.

This recipe can be made a day in advance and is super easy to make. The caramel can keep in the fridge for up to a day, covered. The cakes get better as they sit. And when you frost your sandwiches, you can wrap them easily in plastic and freeze them. It makes 6 sandwiches, but each one could probably be cut in half again. Unless you are a chocolate fiend and can handle a lot of dessert, like my mom. I had a lot of fun making this and really love how they turned out. My mom melted when she tasted the caramel filling.

Doing More of What Makes Me Happy + Eating Whoopie Pies

This was also the first time I’ve painted one of my recipes in nearly a year. I’ve been doing a little painting after experiencing severe burnout, and I’m feeling invigorated. I’m really loving it again, and I don’t know how the magic came back. Or why. But I’ll take it! I sat down at my desk last night and sketched out a whoopie pie while listening to a podcast. I painted by lamp light for about 30 minutes and found myself smiling while mixing colors. My painting lately (custom logos) has been very rigid. So being able to mix browns and caramels and paint something much more loose and simple was so freeing. 

I feel like I’m in a phase of my life where I want to invest in my own creativity, so I’m excited to continue painting and cooking. In this phase I still feel like a little kid, and I’m healing that part of myself that felt like I have to fit in to be taken seriously. I feel so much better when I get lost in a task. A painting. A recipe. A book. So I will be doing as much of this as I can, and I hope the beautiful magic of feeling like a kid again inspires you. What did you love to do as a kid? Is there something you “gave up” on? What do you miss? I would love to know. I really recommend doing as much of it as possible. 

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