Vegan Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Valeria's Note:

Whoopie pies are pretty expensive at the vegan bakery in my town, so I scrounged around and found two good-looking recipes on two different blogs. The first blog said that the result was tasty, but the texture wasn't spongy enough. So I used the filling recipe from there and found the cake recipe on another blog. The result is fantastic. NOTES: (1) The brown sugar is hard to blend in really well when it's clumpy, and so is the flour when the wet and dry ingredients come together. An electric mixer can probably fix that problem. (2) The recommended brands in the US for the egg replacer, vegan cream cheese and vegan butter, respectively, are Ener-G, Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and Earth Balance. (3) As the first reviewer noted, these spongy pies are prone to both dry out fast and take on moisture. I wrapped mine individually in Saran wrap, but a more natural solution is to store them with a piece of stale bread, or just gather together a bunch of people and eat them in one go!

• Total Time: 36 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 16 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 14 whoopie ...

The cakes

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 ½ cups brown sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 2 egg substitute
• 2 cups pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

The filling

• 4 ounces vegan cream cheese
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons vegan butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Start with the cakes. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices in large mixing bowl. In a seperate bowl, cream together sugar, oil, egg replacers, pumpkin and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together.
3. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto greased cookie sheets and bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until the center of the cookies springs back when lightly pressed. Cool thoroughly on wire racks or towels before spreading with filling.
4. While the cakes are baking you can make the cream cheese filling. In a medium bowl, cream together vegan cream cheese and vegan butter. Mix in powdered sugar one half cup at a time until thoroughly blended.
5. To assemble, spread a sizeable dollop of filling on the bottom of one thoroughly cooled cake, make a "sandwich" with a second cake.

Reviews

[Chef #1250220]

WOW, just plain wow. This is one of the most delicious little treats I have come across in a long time. The filling is perfectly sweet, and not overwhelming, and the cookies are like two thick slices of sweet pumpkin bread- in cookie form. A tip: they seem to absorb moisture fairly quickly, so store in a container with a stale piece of bread, otherwise they get extremely crumbly. Thank you for putting this up! :)