Today’s experiment came about after a sudden realization that St. Patrick’s Day is ONLY A FEW DAYS AWAY. This means nothing to me, necessarily, except that it is a good reason to make some kind of holiday-themed dish, which we all know is my raison d’etre. (It’s French. Look it up, yo.)
At least I had the good sense not to go looking on Pinterest. Pinterest is like the La Brea Tar Pits, in the sense that I could fall in there, get stuck, and never get out. Fifty thousand years from now, scientists would find my skeleton curled around a shell of a laptop and clutching a tiny little handcrafted Shiny Dorodango Mud Ball. Those scientists would make up stories about what would possess a reasonably normal (as far as we know) human to fall into a tar pit of surfing, cooking, and crafting. They would probably think Pin-Terest was some sort of religion, and they would put my remains in the George C. Page Museum, and people would talk about how, long ago, when we worshiped the god “Pin” of “Terest,” what underdeveloped beings we were, and they will probably depict us as half-shaven dimwits and marvel that we were even able to feed ourselves.
Speaking of feeding ourselves, I decided on the Green Velvet Shamrock Whoopie Pies. I found the recipe on lovestoeat here. One thing that took me aback when I tried to make Paula Deen’s Red Velvet Whoopie Pies is that Whoopie Pies are deceptively difficult to make. Looking back, I should have realized that they are, in essence, a cake that you bake on a cookie sheet, so why wouldn’t they be at least a little more difficult than regular cookies, amirite? When you are in a holiday treat baking induced frenzy, the concept of “looks easier than it is” is not one that seems terribly obvious.
Those red velvet Whoopie Pies came out like little pancake puddles. I’m not going to act like that didn’t stop some people in this house from eating them, because some people scraped a couple off of the tray and ate them anyway. And it was crazy good batter too, so there was that. But I made a point of being a little more careful with the texture of the cookie/cake this time. (Cakie?? Why do we call this a pie?)
You cannot imagine the amount of food coloring that is required to make a chocolate batter turn green. It’s a lot. The recipe calls for one ounce, which you may or may not know is an entire bottle of McCormicks food coloring. I used a gel color, and easily used 3/4 tsp of it, which is an awful lot of gel coloring.
It really is a much nicer green in person. Really.
You are supposed to draw little shamrocks on your parchment paper, flip it over, and pipe the batter into the outlines of the shamrocks. They are going to smoosh out, so don’t loose a lot of time to getting them precise. I didn’t, and mine came out just fine and shamrocky.
Seriously. Don’t spend a lot of time on this step. You’ll be tempted.
I used an Ateco #806 tip, which is a half-inch round tip. I love being able to say that because it sounds like lingo from someone who knows what they are doing. I have had my piping kit for all of three months, but lets not pretend it doesn’t sound impressive when I say that. Before you get intimidated, though, you should know that my cake decorating education comes from the Culinary Institute of YouTube, and that is why I just now realized that I needed to fold the bag down when I filled it.
(pause for laughter)
As you can see, I just piped essentially six loops and a stem.
It looks WAY more impressive than it is. I’ve cropped a lot out of this shot.
I used the Ateco #826 (1/2 inch star) to pipe the frosting, and then put them together. The only reason I used a star tip on this is because we all know that when you pipe swirls out of a round tip, it looks like poo. I don’t make the rules, y’all.
I’m looking over a four leaf clover!
That I overlooked before!!
And the money shot… which I messed up , of course.
Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with them.
All in all, they came out a lot better than my red velvet ones. A lot. And it’s not even a Pinterest find, so TAKE THAT PINTEREST! I think I will most likely be brave enough to try them for HRH’s class treat this Friday, and in doing so, will make 14 little girls very happy, and two teachers and 26 parents (possibly) not all that thrilled with me.
But if they forgave me those valentine pop sugar bombs, they can surely forgive this. Right?
Right.
Pingback: This is not healthy. | Lovely Discourse