How to Make Homemade Whoopie Pies and Mississippi Mud Pie

[Music] i think i'm home i think i'm home [Music] i think i'm home [Music] today on cook's country chocolate is on the menu bridget and julia make the ultimate mississippi mud pie adam reviews many food processors and bridget and julia share the secrets to winning whoopie pies that's all right here on cook's country the mighty mississippi has always been more than just a river that's right it's shaped american culture that's how i learned how to measure a second one mississippi two mississippi i remember learning how to spell it in mrs fitch's third grade class m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i very good don't forget the adventures of huckleberry found that's one of my favorite books took us on an unforgettable journey down the mississippi river the river has even influenced our food the dark chocolate covered mud at the river's bottom has inspired many well-loved desserts like mississippi mud pie which we're making today oh so good and we're gonna head into the kitchen and we're getting a little muddy just a little bit [Music] mississippi mud pie is an impressive dessert but it suffers from too many choices you've got to pick a crust build a gooey chocolate layer and top it off with something cool and creamy speaking of cool and creamy mississippi mud pie is a real project and as you mentioned there are three layers there's the crust there's a chocolate layer and then something else on top we wanted a nice easy crust because this is a project we wanted it chocolatey and the best way is to make a chocolate cookie crust and of course the best chocolate cookie crusts are made with these these are famous wafers made by nabisco and we like them because they're not too sweet so this is 25 of these little cookies and we're going to break them up and put them in the food processor we're going to grind them into fine crumbs and that takes about 30 seconds this is four tablespoons of unsalted melted butter we're just gonna pulse this together about four to six pulses to turn these crumbs into a crust we're just gonna use the bottom of a flat measuring cup here and just pack the crumbs down and i'm gonna use the side of the measuring cup and just angle it to the side of the pie plate you just want to press it into the side all right so this guy is ready for the oven we're going to par bake it just until it's fragrant and set and that takes about 15 minutes in a 325 degree oven [Music] this crust has come out of the oven and you know it's done because you can feel that it's set a bit when you touch it so smell it and it's very fragrant oh yeah and it's okay if this is still warm when you make this next layer okay and it starts of course with some deep chocolate flavor so we're going to use four ounces of bittersweet chocolate to this we're going to add three tablespoons of unsalted butter and three tablespoons of vegetable oil the vegetable oil will help keep that brownie good and chewy we're also going to boost the chocolate flavor with a little dutch processed cocoa and that's a tablespoon and a half okay we're just going to melt this all together until it's good and smooth and that's about a minute and a half in the microwave at 50 percent power oh nothing like a little chocolate yeah mixed together mmm gonna give this a good stir make sure all those pieces of chocolate are good and melted let it cool for just a few minutes while we make the rest of this mixture this is two-thirds of a cup dark brown sugar we're gonna add two large eggs this is two teaspoons of vanilla this is a quarter teaspoon salt we're just going to whisk this together until it's nice and smooth to this mixture i'm going to add our melted chocolate last but not least we're just going to add a little bit of flour obviously to help the whole thing hold together all right this is three tablespoons of all-purpose flour we're just going to whisk this in and that's it we're just going to pour this mixture right into our crust i have to say when i was a kid my sister and i used to make actual mud pies we even had a class you did that had how to make a real mud pie and all these other outdoor desserts like how much dirt to how much water really yeah the ratios in there i can't remember them off the top of my head no wonder you turned out to be such a good cook this is so much better looking than smelling than any of the mud pies that my sister and i made all right so this has to go back into the oven until that brownie layer cooks and that takes about another 15 minutes all right [Music] oh smell that yes so we're going to let this cool on the counter for about an hour and then we're going to put in the refrigerator and let it really chill out for another hour before we put that top layer on okay but in the meantime we're going to make a little topping a little crunchy bits so i'm going to have you help me here all right we're gonna take some more of these wafers this is ten of these wafers we're gonna put them in a bag and you're gonna whack them all oh okay now we want big pieces like half an inch to three quarters of an inch you can't get too much gresh now just slight tapping all right so i'm gonna put all these chocolate pieces into a big bowl to this i'm gonna add two tablespoons of confectioners sugar that will help ensure that the topping stays good and crisp one tablespoon of dutch processed cocoa never enough a little bit of salt this is just eighth a teaspoon of salt we're gonna stir this together almost like we do for the crust you take the cookies and you turn them into something else we're doing the same thing here to this we're gonna add two tablespoons of unsalted melted butter you wanna stir this together until it's all dark and glossy you don't see any of that powdered sugar left over so we're just going to dump this out onto a parchment lined baking sheet you just want to spread them out a little bit onto the baking sheet we're just going to bake these for about 10 minutes again in that 325 degree oven [Music] so for the top layer this last layer this is somewhat controversial because some pies use a layer of ice cream on top but that doesn't travel well it doesn't hold well so instead we're going to make a very quick mousse we're going to start with heavy cream now this is a cup of heavy cream and i took three tablespoons of it and i heated it up in the microwave because i want to dissolve some of these other flavorings so here we have two tablespoons of confectioners sugar and add more chocolate of course two tablespoons of dutch processed cocoa eighth a teaspoon of salt we're gonna whisk this together we're gonna take this chocolate mixture put it into our standing mixer and to this we're going to add the rest of the cream again that was a cup of cream and this cream is chilled because chilled cream whips better we're going to whip this mixture to stiff peaks and as always we're going to start on low build that structure and then finish our eyes all right oh yeah look at that this is six ounces of melted milk chocolate and we found that the temperature of the chocolate really matters here because if the chocolate is too warm it'll melt the whipped cream but if it's too cold the whipped cream won't incorporate evenly so the magic temperature is between 90 and 100 degrees we just melted this in the microwave and then we let it sit on the counter perfect we're just going to take about a third of this whipped cream we're going to add it to the chocolate and incorporate the fluffy into here to really lighten it up now i'm going to take the rest of this mousse and gently put it in the bowl all right so to fold these two together i just like to spin the bowl i'm going to clean the edges and we're just going to keep doing this until there's no real streaks of chocolate left we're going to spread this on top of our cooled pie i'm just going to slowly spread this out i'm going to leave a little crust showing you want to know that's under there last but not least we have our topping so i'm going to take these cookie crumbles just crumble them over the top all right so this pie needs to chill for about three hours in the fridge to help that moose layer set up but you could let it chill overnight [Music] all right so it's eaten time oh my goodness this pie is well chilled so let's dig in oh hello i mean it's incredible now it was a little bit of work but let me just tuck in there i love that it's not too sweet it's creamy and chocolaty and you get that layer on the bottom and that mousse on top this is the best mississippi mud pie i've ever had and i've eaten them all if you'd like to make our stunning mississippi mud pie at home well you gotta start from the bottom up with a simple chocolate cookie crumb crust then top that crust first with a gooey brownie layer followed by a fluffy creamy layer of chocolate mousse finally a crisp crunchy layer of cookie crumbs baked with butter provides a suitable crown for this queen of desserts and so there you have it from cook's country the most marvelous majestic and magnificent mississippi mud pie [Music] a full-size food processor can take on a lot of jobs everything from chopping vegetables to making pie or bread dough but adam's here to show us why a mini food processor might be the perfect tool for smaller kitchen jobs oh the jobs you can do with a mini food processor bridget you know they're great for making emulsifications like mayonnaise they're really good for pesto or hummus they're great for dressings marinades they're also a lot less expensive than the full-size food processors now we looked at the marketplace we narrowed down the lineup to these seven that we have here the capacity is between three and six cups for these and the price range was a low of 28 dollars to a high of a hundred dollars to test these machines the testers made pesto hummus mayonnaise they minced garlic they diced onions carrots and celery they grated parmesan cheese and they chopped almonds now they noted right off the bat that some of the machines tended to go a little fast the motors were really strong and that meant that you could too easily over process your vegetables you didn't get nice neat cuts you got more like a vegetable slushy which isn't good the opposite end of that problem were the machines that didn't have quite enough umph to really chop through the stuff like this one for instance made this pesto here that's more like a salad that's more like a salad that's exactly what it's like some of the testers were really nice and described it as rustic but either way it's not acceptable pesto's supposed to be a lot smoother than that in terms of making mayonnaise what you have to do to make mayonnaise or any emulsification is to have your egg yolks and the other ingredients going inside the work bowl and dribble in the oil very slowly so that it will emulsify and in order to do that you have to have some kind of opening in the lid of the machine there are two types here this one has a little drip hole like that this one has a feed tube like that those four in front of you had neither so you couldn't really make a mayonnaise which is a key task for a small food processor so we kind of eliminated those based on that alone okay of the three that did have some kind of opening two of them made great mayonnaise one of them didn't actually make great mayonnaise and after looking at it very carefully the testers determined that it was a slightly flawed blade design in that there was a little too much space underneath the blade that allowed egg yolks and ingredients to spin around underneath and not really emulsify the way they should with the oil as it dribbled in now the blade type also made a difference in terms of nice clean cuts some of them had serrated blades like this one those tended to chew up the food a little bit didn't make very neat cuts at all some of them had nice straight blades like that one they made much neater cuts and that's what our winning mini food processor had this is the cuisinart elite collection chopper grinder it's four cups it's just a hair under sixty dollars and it had everything we're looking for in a mini food processor that four cup capacity it made a beautiful mayonnaise it had that nice clean straight edge to make good cuts it was a terrific little machine small job small machine small price exactly the perfect trifecta well there you go our winner is the cuisinart elite collection it's a four cup chopper grinder thank you very much adam my pleasure bridget [Music] in january of 2011 after 65 years of intense peacekeeping efforts lawmakers in maine filed a resolution that became a declaration of war whoopie pie war they proposed a bill that made the whoopee buy the official state pie sparking outrage in pennsylvania who also claimed the woofie pie as their own and called maine's whoopee pie grab an act of confectionary larceny i love that part now the president of maine's whoopie pie association said i'm sorry we've upset the whole state of pennsylvania the maine whoopie pie association is really a very peaceful group and we mean no harm though it might all sound a little bit silly well whoopie pie is really worth fighting for and today we're going to show you how to claim your own version of the whoopie pie so let's start at the very outside those two big cookie cake pie things are they cookie cakes or pies who knows it's a cookie cake pie it's a cookie cake pie we have two cups of all-purpose flour we're using all-purpose not cake flour because we want some structure and then we're using a half cup of dutch processed cocoa that's a lot it's a lot and it's the really dark stuff it's not the natural cocoa natural cocoa made the cakes a little too red we have a little bit of salt a half a teaspoon and then for leavener now a lot of recipes in modern days use baking powder which is a mix of baking soda it's got a little bit of cream of tartar in there and what happened was it created actual cakes very domed very perfect looking cakes we wanted the old-fashioned style so the cakes will rise and then they'll start to collapse on themselves which is a great thing it makes little fissures on top and this is one teaspoon of baking soda so not baking powder just baking soda go ahead and whisk this together now that's the only chocolate product i see out here was the cocoa so is that the sole flavor of chocolate in this whole cake it absolutely is every time that we tried to add real chocolate to the mix it made them too fudgy and too moist let's just set this off to the side for a moment over to the standing mixer let's start off with butter we're using butter for a couple of reasons one put butter up against shortening in a whoopie pie it's gonna win every single time because of flavor the other thing is we want to give it a little bit more structure vegetable shortening made it too tender so in goes eight tablespoons of unsalted butter and now our sugar now for our sugar product we're not using granulated sugar we're using light brown sugar this is a cup this is going to give it some depth of flavor and now we're going to let this go just on medium speed we want that butter and sugar mixture to get really light and fluffy that's going to take about four minutes our sugar started to dissolve it's all nice and fluffy we're going to add one large egg which is going to give us some structure we'll just beat that until it's incorporated and as you know when you add the egg you always have to scrape down the sides as well just to make sure it's all incorporated and get that little divot in the bottom what's up with that divot everything hides in the divot jimmy hoffa is in the divot that looks good so now a teaspoon of vanilla extract which kind of is the law you always have to add it to every dessert but it always tastes good with chocolate it helps really bring out some of the chocolate flavor i think it sure does [Music] okay that was quick and easy now we're going to go ahead and add the dry ingredients but we're going to add it in increments we're going to add some of the dry along with our liquid the old back and forth method the old back and forth method dry wet dry wet exactly because if you added all of one you could end up with dough clumps or if you added all of the liquid sometimes you'll end up with this mixture that never quite gets mixed together so our liquid that we're using is buttermilk and the buttermilk is 100 necessary to activate with that baking soda it's going to react and that's what's going to give lift and give some good tang exactly so we're going to add a third of this dry mixture i'm going to turn this on low to begin with and just mix this until it's incorporated that looks good and we can start to smell that cocoa that chocolate oh so i'm going to add half of the buttermilk that makes a half cup i'm going to add half of the remaining dry mix and again just mix until it's mostly incorporated and then the remaining buttermilk now the remaining dry ingredients and that's really all i want to do at this point i'm going to finish stirring this by hand we want these cakes to kind of balloon up and then collapse if they have too much structure they won't collapse they won't form those nice little cracks on top you're really being very careful not to over mix this absolutely you just want to get it to the point where you stop seeing those streaks so minimal stirring with this that's right maximal eating what i have here is two rimmed baking sheets lined with parchment paper you really need to bake these on two sheets because these are big only six per sheet you can use a third cup measuring cup which is fine or you can use a number 12 disher and you want to spread these about three inches apart now these are going to go into a 350 degree oven they're going to bake for about 15 to 18 minutes during that time i want to switch the pans and rotate them as well [Music] smells good yeah all right so let's take a look at these cakes you can see they've spread a little bit now if i take my finger and press in the middle see how it comes back it's like memory foam it is like memory foam we're going to let these cool completely before we fill them with our frosting filling mixture and they need to be cooled otherwise they would start to melt the filling for the filling it's kind of in between a frosting and a filling now a lot of recipes use marshmallow fluff that's what we're going to use too but again a lot of recipes started with shortening instead we're subbing out butter one for flavor but two we found a lot of the fillings were just too runny and butter once it's in the fridge is going to re-solidify and we're going to get a really nice firm filling so we've got 12 tablespoons of unsalted butter softened and confectioners sugar this is one and a quarter cup of course that cornstarch that's mixed in with the confectioners sugar is going to help to thicken the mixture as well we're going to start this on low and we're going to let this go on medium until it's really nice and fluffy that's going to take about two minutes that butter and sugar is looking nice and fluffy looks delicious i'm going to add vanilla this is one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt we'll let this go just another 30 seconds or so to beat in that vanilla all right there we go it's all incorporated now my favorite ingredient let's do it two and a half cups of marshmallow fluff one thing to know is when you beat fluff every time you beat it it actually starts to deflate so that's why we beat the butter first along with the confectioners sugar and we're adding the fluff now and we're going to beat this again on medium speed for just two minutes looks so good see it has that kind of beige color it's not pure white and i got a lot of complaints about this whoopie pie recipe just because of that color a lot of pure say has to have vegetable shortening in it which is white i will take beige filling over white filling if it means better flavor i'm with you now i'm going to scrape this into a bowl oh my gosh that looks so good it's going to get even thicker as it chills this is going to go into the fridge for at least 30 minutes while it's in there that butter is going to start to re-solidify it's going to be very nice and spreadable [Music] all right the finale i'm ready for my whoopee give me whoopee or give me death i'm not going to give you death good we've got whoopi this is well chilled let's flip over a couple of these pies oh yeah you can see they really are cakey we're only going to fill two whoopie pies now just one for you and me later on we'll come back we'll fill the rest and we'll eat those later back to my third cup scoop that much filling oh yeah oh bring it we're gonna go ahead and scoop on two of these oh yeah and then i'm going to have you do one all right just go ahead and top and press i'm going to swirl and press oh i like your method i just want to be fancy and it looks great if that filling starts to peek out the sides and see what i mean they're not sticky they're not fudgy they're not messy at all they're tired no sometimes when you get them the cake comes off on your fingers but this doesn't do that all right here goes um [Music] that's good what's nice though is that filling is still nice and creamy it's not running it's not going all over the place it's also not too sweet there really wasn't much sugar in that cake so the cake is pretty savory but the filling is where all the sweetness is it's hard to believe people fight over something this delicious you know what i mean what else would you fight over love and whoopie pies right well there's enough whoopie pie here for everybody i agree so to make a real whoopie pie start with a simple cake batter flavored with dutch processed cocoa and buttermilk and portion it into small individual cakes on a baking sheet so that they're dom dom top but flat on the bottom to make the filling combine marshmallow fluff with some butter and confectioners sugar and let it chill in the refrigerator until firm then you simply put the two together and there you have it from cook's country the last word on how to make an authentic whoopie pie you can get this recipe all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website cookscountry.com all wars should answer sweetly right thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 172,450

Keywords: mississippi mud pie, chocolate, chocolatey, mud pie, recipe, dessert recipe, chocolate crust, chocolate cookie crust, pie crust, chocolate wafer crumb crust, cocoa, baking, pie, pie baking, whoopie pie, whoopie pies, whoopie pie recipe, marshmallow fluff

Id: lLyd8N5klHs

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 04 2018