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.