Whoopie Pies

It was my Mom's birthday this week, but since we are celebrating it today, I had some time to bake her favorite dessert - whoopie pies!  I've never made these before, so I searched online for a good recipe and tried it out. I wanted to make the filling from scratch, but use a cake mix for the other part, so I found a recipe that used a cake mix.  It ended up being really simple to make these and the flavor is spot on!

Ingredients:

For cake:
1 devil's food chocolate cake mix, store bought
3 eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil

For filling:
2 1/2 cups confectionery sugar
2 sticks butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Mix together the ingredients for the cake. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Then, with a ladel scoop out the batter into cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. You want the scoops to be as even as possible, and about 2-3 inches across in width. They will expand while cooking so keep them small!  Bake for about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the softened butter and confectionery sugar into a mixer, and mix until combined.  Add the vanilla extract and mix on a higher setting so that it whips the filling and makes it more airy and less dense.  I let it mix for about 3 minutes like this.

Once the cakes are done, let them cool completely.  Then, place some of the filling onto each  of the "bottom" pieces, smooth out with a rubber spatula, and then place the "top" pieces on.  And that's it!  Enjoy!

*yields about 6 pies, depending on size*