Zucchini Cake Whoopie Pies with Maple Buttercream Filling

Zucchini cake whoopie pies? Who thinks up such a thing? I do! What made me think of this? Well, you see, I recently received this fun whoopie pies cookbook for my birthday, and I wanted to try one of the recipes in it.

In the book, I saw a recipe for carrot cake whoopie pies that sounded awesome. However, I was in possession of this huge zucchini:

And I felt the need to bake with it! So, I decided to try substituting shredded zucchini for the carrots. Success! The zucchini cake cookies were awesome. 

Then I had to decide which type of filling to use for the whoopie pies. Some kind of cream cheese filling? Chocolate? Actually, thinking back, chocolate probably would have worked quite well with zucchini. What I settled on though was a very tasty maple buttercream filling recipe that was also from the whoopie pies cookbook. Score! A great, unique combo was born.

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 and 1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-2 large eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. 

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour mixture until just combined, then add the zucchini. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour (I chilled mine overnight because I wasn't making the cookies until the next day).

Drop about 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter at a time onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool on sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

For the maple buttercream filling:

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-2 cups confectioners' sugar

-1 Tbsp. milk

-2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

In a stand mixer, beat the butter on low speed until creamy. Add the sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, with the mixer on low until incorporated. Add the milk and maple syrup, and beat on medium for 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl periodically.

Match up cookies of roughly the same size, top one with a generous amount of maple filling, and put the two cookies together. Bam! You've got yourself a delicious (and somewhat healthy, perhaps?? ;-)) whoopie pie. This recipe made about 36 cookies for me...so about 18 whoopie pies.

You'll want to store these cookies in the fridge, and be sure not to stack them on top of one another because they'll stick together. I put mine in tupperware containers, and each layer of whoopie pies was separated by wax paper.

The cookies were a tad flatter than I would have liked, but the flavor was great and they were very cake-like so I was still happy with them.

Hi there little green specks of zucchini! Love that you can see those.

Mmmmm, time for filling. :)

I also made zucchini chocolate chip muffins with that beautiful, huge zucchini, so hopefully that recipe will appear here on the blog soon!

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!