Mini Maple Whoopie Pies

Since I'm headed up to Maine this weekend, and because it's not far from my Dad's birthday, I decided to make him some treats. At his request, I made these mini maple whoopie pies. I've made whoopie pies before, including maple ones, however I decided to kick it up a notch. Instead of using extract to get the maple flavor, I decided to use pure maple syrup and pure maple sugar (finding the maple sugar was an adventure in itself).

The whoopie pie cookies have maple syrup and maple sugar in them. The maple flavor is subtle, but definitely recognizable. Staying true to whoopie pie tradition, the filling is shortening based and light and fluffy. The maple sugar replaced half of the powdered sugar in the recipe, which made the sweetness of the filling much richer. I was surprised to find that pure maple sugar (or, at least the kind I found) is more like powdered sugar than granulated. However, because it isn't purely powder, the filling ended up sprinkled with maple crystals. Those crystals nicely contrast the airy smoothness of the filling.

Valentine's Day Treats!





 For Valentine's Day I made some filled chocolates for someone special. They are Semi-sweet chocolate on the outside, and creamed fondant filling inside. I made four different flavors: Peppermint, Raspberry, Orange, and Maple. Extremely happy with how they came out; they tasted as good as they looked.

Inside of a Peppermint-filled Chocolate

Packaging for the Homemade Chocolates

I had some leftover semi-sweet chocolate chips, so I decided to dip some strawberries in it and add some decoration to the outside. I used three different kinds of sprinkles: red sugar crystals, X's & O's, and non-pariels. For the last pair of berries, I added fresh ground sea salt to compliment the sweetness of the chocolate and fruit.