Pi Day Car Bomb Whoopie Pies

When you're a professor and spend every waking minute with other Ph.Ds things sometimes get a little nerdy. Luckily, when you're a professor, you dig how nerdy your friends are. So, when 3/14/15 rolled around and I was invited to a "Pi Day" party at which we would make a toast at 9:26:53 (yes, down to the second) to celebrate this once a century occurrence of 3.141592653 I was obviously very excited.

The assignment was to come up with a "Pi themed pie" but it was specially requested in the invite that we be creative with our pie selections. To avoid a table full of the same pies, our hosts recommended pizza pies, fruit pies, pot pies, any pies! I first considered making an apple pie, because apple pie is simple an delicious, but after a lot of pondering (when I probably should have been prepping lectures) I decided I wanted to do something more creative. Perhaps a pie I'd never made before? Perhaps, a whoopie pie?

The first thing I did was look up whoopie pie on Wikipedia. A California girl, I've never even a seen a whoopie pie in real life, much less made one. The recipes I found seemed simple enough. Chocolate cakey cookie, white frosting. I can do this. But then, that seems awful boring... It was then that realized that this would likely be the only chance to make a St. Patrick's Day dessert. After all, I like to maximize my holiday spirit (and my holiday spirits).

So, I pulled up my car bomb cupcake recipe from years ago and set to work trying to make an Irish Car Bomb Whoopie Pie to commemorate the overlap between Pi day and St. Patricks's Day.

Car Bomb Whoopie Pies
Makes 20. 

Cookies
1 box Pillsbury Super Moist Dark Chocolate Cake Mix
3 eggs
1/2 bottle (6-oz) Guinness Draught Stout

Preheat oven to 350˚. Combine cake mix and eggs in a large bowl and slowly mix in beer. Mix well for 2 minutes on medium speed, being sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to incorporate beer into all the batter. Let batter sit for at least 10 minutes to become more stiff. Liberally grease or line 2 baking sheets Spoon out batter into approximately 1 to 2 oz portions on cookie sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes. Remove cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on wire racks. Makes apx. 40 cookies

Whiskey Ganache
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup milk
3 tbsp Irish whiskey

In a double boiler bring the milk up to a simmer. Add chocolate chips and stir constantly with a wire whisk until the chocolate is smooth and melted. Remove from heat and stir in whiskey. Cool in the refrigerator for about one hour, checking every 10 minutes or so to make sure it hasn't set up too much. Should be the consistency of thick syrup/loose honey.

Bailey's Frosting
16 oz (one container) Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Vanilla Frosting
4 tbsp Irish Cream

Chill frosting before using. With an electric mixer whip frosting well before slowly adding the Irish Cream. If frosting gets too loose add powdered sugar to thicken it back up.

Assembly

Match cooled cookies into pairs of equal size. If cookies are uniform you can skip this step, but let's be real, they're not. 

Using a small offset spatula or butter knife, frost one cookie from each pair with Bailey's frosting. Sandwich frosting between cookies and set aside. Repeat until all cookies are made into sandwiches. NOTE: I just barely had enough frosting to make all 20 sandwiches. So, if you like more frosting, rather than less in your whoopie pie, plan to double your frosting recipe. 

Place wire racks a cutting board, cookie sheet, or other large, easy to clean flat surface. Remove chilled ganache from refrigerator and dip each sandwich to cover half with ganache. Place on wire racks and chill until ganache is firm.