Passionate Whoopie Pies, or Musings on Dinosaur Eggs

Sunday was Easter, so I thought that today, we should talk about eggs.

Or, rather, I thought that we should talk about things that remind us of eggs.  Like, passion fruit.  Which is what I thought about this Easter.

I mean, come on--do you blame me?  Passion fruits (when they're not completely shriveled up) totally look reminiscent of eggs.  In fact, in my family, we always joke that they're like alien dinosaur eggs because of how weird they look when you cut them open.

So, of course it was natural for me to be thinking about weird looking dinosaur eggs during Easter (yes, that's just how my messed-up brain works--Kids: this is your brain on graduate school. Take note.).

Anyways, I also associate a feeling of down home simplicity and nostalgia with Easter, and so I thought nothing would be more fitting for our Easter celebration than combining dinosaur/alien eggs with homey goodness in the form of passion fruit whoopie pies!

I have been meaning to make whoopie pies for quite a while now.  It falls into that family of frosting-sandwiched-in-between-baked-goodness that I love so much, along with the also-nostalgic sandwich cookie or the high-class, snobby French macaron.  Whoopie pies are basically what would happen if you took a cupcake and converted into a sandwich form, which, in my humble opinion, is a genius move.

For my whoopie pie cakes, I used an adaptation of the recipe published a while ago in the New York Times. One concern I had when embarking on making whoopie pies were that the cakes would be super dry, which is how some of the proprietary ones that I've had are like.  And there's really nothing I can't stand more than dry cake.  Ugh.  But, my worries were for naught, because these cakes turned out beautifully moist and dense.  They were sooooo, sooooo good.  Like, I-almost-skipped-the-frosting good.  To kick up the chocolate quotient even more, I used black cocoa powder in addition to regular cocoa powder, which made the batter awesomely dark.  The cakes turned out super chocolate-y and ever so subtly sweet, which were perfect for the sweet, fruity frosting that I had planned.

For the frosting, I adapted a vanilla frosting recipe found here with vanilla bean and folded in passion fruit curd.  The result was a tantalizing flavor combination of citrus-y, tangy, and sweet passion fruit frosting, with  dark and moist chocolate.  Um... yes!  To make the passion fruit curd, I used a syrupy passion fruit nectar that you can find bottled in Asian supermarkets so that the passion fruit flavor would really come out robustly through the chocolate cake, though fresh passion fruit juice should also work as well.

These "passionate" whoopie pies went over really well at Easter.  I credit their success to the combination of moist chocolate cake that isn't too sweet and the surprising punch of passion fruit frosting in the center.  And, all in convenient sandwich form, too!  I made some little, two-bite size whoopie pies (or one bite, depending on how big your mouth is ;-P) that my mom took with her to her office.  Apparently, people lamented to her about only having one bite-size whoopie pie per person, and, honestly, I feel for them--I can't just eat one either!

Anyhow, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!  This week's going to be a super busy one for me: I'm running a workshop this coming weekend with many of the leading researchers in my field, which promises to be at once excellent fun but also crazy work leading up to it!  (Wish me luck surviving!)  But, I have some really, really exciting things in the works for the blog for next week.  Like, black cocoa.  Stay tuned for more about that in a few posts or so!

In the meantime, let's hear a "Whoopee!" for whoopie pies.  (and crazy, dinosaur-egg-looking passion fruits!)  :-D


Read on for recipe...

Strawberry Rhubarb (and Orange!) Crumble, or My First Rhubarb

I came to baking and food relatively later in life--okay, but I'm not that old, so it really is relative--so a lot of things are still new for me.  Like rhubarb, for instance.

I'd never even heard of the stuff until college, and it's taken me this long after college to even man up and try it.  I mean, I've heard the virtues of rhubarb extolled many times before, but it was really reminiscent to the unknowledgeable me of celery, which doesn't really scream "yummy dessert!" for me.  But, at last and finally, I have gotten down to trying the classic combination of strawberries and rhubarb.

I decided for my first experience with rhubarb, that I should go with something classic, so I chose the super-homey, tried-and-true strawberry rhubarb crumble.  Not to say that super-homey and tried-and-true is anything bad at all.  In fact, it was delicious.

Like any good academic, I of course did my homework first by researching rhubarb and how it's used in baked desserts.  For one, I discovered that you can't cook rhubarb in cast iron skillets, though, had you could, that would have made for one awesome photo.  Then, while reading up on rhubarb in Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit (wait, is rhubarb really a fruit?), I came across this little tidbit from the ever-wise Alice Waters: rhubarb goes lovely with oranges.  So, may I present to you, strawberry rhubarb crumble, flavored with orange zest.  And, by the way, Alice Waters was so right.  Orange is the perfect citrus accompaniment to the combination of strawberry and rhubarb.  It's just acidic enough to add that bit of tartness, but, unlike lemon, orange is also sweet, which compliments the rhubarb really well and adds just that extra depth of flavor to the whole dish.

Now, I may be new to rhubarb, but I'm not new to crusts, and I have to say that the crumb crust on this crumble *almost* outshines the strawberry rhubarb +orange filling inside.  The crumb, too, is spiked with orange zest, and the brown sugar and butter with just a hint of salt makes for a perfect contrast to the sweet, sticky insides of the crumble.  I layered the crumb topping on thick for a solid filling-to-crumb ratio so that you can get a good taste of everything in just one bite.

There is only one thing that could make this better....  Wait for it...

Yup.  Make sure to serve this baby with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some sweetened heavy cream.  Not that it needs it, but it sure doesn't hurt!

Now, I hope you'll excuse me while I dig into what's left of my crumbles....

Oh, and by the way--I think I'm calling this one a success with rhubarb.  Now, what else can you do with this celery-like "fruit"?  Tell me your ideas in the comments!


Read on for recipe...