Donna Hay's rainbow whoopie pies (Twitter avatar fun)

Our first chef-of-the-month for 2012 is Donna Hay, chosen by Kayte. I'd never heard of Donna Hay, but apparently she is a very famous and prolific Australian cookbook author. I spent quite an enjoyable amount of time browsing her site and checking out recipes. She has a kids' section, which especially appealed to me.

Baby girl and I picked the rainbow whoopie pies...baking them together was a perfect way to spend a Saturday morning! I've heard a lot about whoopie pies on the blogosphere over the past year, but had yet to try any. We still have a counter-full of holiday cookies that hubby's mom left for us when she visited last week, so I knew we didn't need a lot more sweets, so I just made a third of the recipe.

The cookies were easy and the little girl had fun dumping ingredients into the bowl and using the scale to make sure we had the right amount. DH says the dough is wet (which it is) and difficult to form into balls, but we used one of my cookie scoops, which worked just fine. I actually got 16 cookies from the 1/3 batch, and they were perfectly done in 15 minutes. While they baked, I made the filling with marshmallows, butter, and a little white chocolate. Unsurprisingly, the taste and texture was very similar to a rice crispie bar. I'm a little confused about the amounts; I made over 1/3 of the filling recipe, and yet it was only enough to fill the three sandwiches you see in the picture above. So we had ten plain chocolate cookies leftover (unfortunately, I'm out of marshmallows so I couldn't make more filling).

These were delicious little treats! Hubby especially enjoyed his with his coffee, although I'm not sure they technically count as a healthy breakfast treat. :) And the leftover cookies made perfect ice cream sandwiches for dessert. ;)

Donna Hay's rainbow whoopie pies
scaled from Donna Hay
makes 8 or 9 whoopie pies (this is 1/3 of the cookie recipe and 2/3 of the filling recipe)

83 g unsalted butter, softened
60 g light brown sugar
55 g superfine sugar
1 egg
125 g all-purpose flour
17 g cocoa
scant 1/2 tsp baking powder
100 g marshmallows
20 g unsalted butter
40 g white chocolate (chips or chopped bar)
rainbow sprinkles

1. Preheat oven to 300º.
2. Beat butter and sugars together in a large mixing bowl until pale and creamy.
3. Add egg and beat until combined.
4. Sift flour, cocoa, and baking powder on top of the wet ingredients and stir until combined.
5. Use a cookie scoop to portion cookie balls onto parchment-lined baking sheet.
6. Bake cookies for 15 minutes, until baked through. Cool on wire rack.
7.While cookies are baking, make filling: combine marshmallows and 20 g butter in a small saucepan and cook over low, stirring constantly, until smooth. Off heat, add chocolate and stir until smooth. Set aside to cool. (It will get firm and sticky instantly, so I transferred it quickly to a bowl to cool.)
8. Match cookies up by size. Put filling on one side, put another cookie on top, and sprinkle the sprinkles around the outside.