Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

What to do with a box of red velvet cake mix? Make a cake? LOL no; too easy. Cookies? I don't know, kind of boring. Whoopie pies? YES!

I found a recipe online calling for only cake mix, shortening, and eggs. The cookies looked nicer (more like Oreo Cakester cookies) than other recipes calling for a more cakey batter. I decided to add some cocoa powder since I like super-cocoa flavor.

I mixed together 1 box of red velvet cake mix, 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder, 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons of shortening, and 2 eggs. The batter was rather thick and I happened to have buttermilk in the fridge, so I mixed a couple of tablespoons into the batter. Note: the little white dots are bits of my fancy non-hydrogenated shortening...

Scoop by tablespoon and attempt to drop onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. My batter wouldn't drop on its own, so I had to help it. Thus, they came out a little ugly. Perhaps an oiled tablespoon would correct that.

What I did here was drop the batter onto a sheet of parchment while I had one batch in the oven to at 375°F for 9 minutes, then I just changed out the parchment.

Now for the filling. What's better with red velvet cake than cream cheese frosting? White chocolate cream cheese frosting! Melt 3 oz of white chocolate and allow to cool a bit. Beat on high 4 oz of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of butter, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Add in the white chocolate and beat some more before slowly beating in 1 cup of confectioner's sugar.

I forgot to picture the vanilla.

Put the frosting in a piping bag, or in my case, a ziplock with a corner cut off, and pipe the frosting onto the bottom of one cookie, then top with another. Thanks to the white chocolate, the frosting stiffens up with time, so even though they are really messy to eat right away, after a few hours they're totally manageable.

They were perfect. Perfect, I tell you!