THE BEST
OF YOUR LIFE
HOMEMADE GOES VIRAL 75 PERCENT
OF AMERICANS HAVE COOKED MORE
MEALS AT HOME IN THE PAST YEAR.
Recipe
MOM’S WHOOPIE PIES
EATING WELL
PHOTOGRAPHY BYTKTKTKT Homemade?
Big Whoopie
My mother’s made-from-scratch
treats were a source of constant
embarrassment—until I grew up
B Y JOANNE WEIR
Makes 15 cookies
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup cocoa, sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup buttermilk
FILLING
¾ cup butter, softened
1 cup confectioners’
sugar, sifted
1 ½ cups prepared
marshmallow crème
2 teaspoons vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
When I was a kid, I was sent to school every
day with homemade cookies—chewy, choco-late-morsel-laden cookies, or crisp sugar cookies glazed with lemon. They were delicious, but
like most kids, I wanted to be just like everyone
else, and all the other kids had Chips Ahoy. I
would have killed for one of those store-bought
cookies, hard and dried out though they were.
But my mom was a professional chef, so everything I ate was made from scratch. Most
times, it drove me crazy.
There’s some truth to the saying
that you don’t appreciate what
you have until you’re older. For
me, it was the Mother ’s Day my
mom and I decided to surprise
my grandmother with homemade
whoopie pies. My mother made
the chocolate cakes while I made the
cream, and we assembled them together.
I still remember the smile on my grandmother’s face when she saw us coming with those
pies. She made a pot of tea, and we sat down for
an afternoon of “girl talk.” Sometime during
those hours, I realized that to my mom, cooking
was so much more than whipping egg whites.
To her, cooking was love—love for me, her
mother, and all those who touched her heart. ;
1 Preheat oven to 375˚F.
2 With an electric mixer,
beat the sugar, egg, butter,
and vanilla until light and
creamy. In another bowl,
mix the cocoa, baking soda,
salt, and flour; then blend
with buttermilk into the
creamed mixture.
3 Drop batter by the
heaping tablespoon onto
greased baking sheets and
bake 7 to 9 minutes.
Remove from the baking
sheets and cool on wire
racks. Makes 30 mini-cakes.
4 To make the filling, mix
together all ingredients well.
5 To assemble, sandwich
a heaping tablespoon of
cream between two cakes,
dividing cream evenly be-
tween the 15 whoopie pies.
Nutrients per whoopie pie
354 calories, 4g protein, 50g car-
bohydrates, 1g fiber, 16g fat, 56mg
cholesterol, 240mg sodium
JIM FRANCO (FOOD S T YLIS T: STEPHANA BOT TOM); ILLUSTRATION B Y DOMINIC CLIFFORD
MORE TEMPTING
TREATS
Find Joanne’s mom’s lemon sugar
cookies at aarp.org/lemoncookies.
