Sand Dollar Whoopie “It’s Summer!” Pies for Teacher’s Gifts

(Last Updated On: January 30, 2015)

I really racked my brains coming up with this one. I wanted to make a memorable, edible treat to pass out to my children’s teachers.

My kids have about 30 (ish) teachers between the four of them and when you multiply that by Starbucks Giftcards, you can see why we may never be able to afford college.

You don’t need a whoopie pie maker to make these, but it sure helps speed the process! Last year I purchased a Babycakes Whoopie Pie Maker. It was on sale at Kohl’s and I had some crazy coupon. At the time I was on a cake ball making spree. I loved my cakeball maker soooo much I could not resist the Whoopie Pie one for the twelve bucks or so it came down to.

“You’ll never use this thing!” said the huz

I can’t stand for him to be right about this kind of stuff.  Which is about half the reason I invented these treats.

Whoopie “It’s Summer!” Pies

 

Ingredients:

• Cake batter (recipe below or use boxed if you are in a pinch!)
• Powdered Sugar
• Candy Necklace beads (the white ones only)
• Royal Icing in a squeezable container (recipe below)
• Marshmallow Filling (recipe below)

Here’s how I did it:

1. First make the little cake saucers. There’s not much to this, if you have a whoopie pie maker (otherwise use a specialized baking tin). You can use boxed cake mix or feel free to use the yellow cake recipe I’m sharing below. It will make close to 100 saucers, or more, and they are a dense, moist, rich cake. Some of them just might disappear before you get around to frosting them. Follow the directions on the Whoopie Pie Maker or pan for baking.

 

2. Once the saucers are cool, divide them into two groups and spread out flat sides down. Dust both groups liberally with powdered sugar. You could toss them in a bag with the sugar but I sort of liked the organic looking speckles I got from dusting  with a shaker.

3. You’ll only decorate half of the saucers (the tops) with this next step. Drizzle royal icing in the shape of a five pointed star over the top of each saucer. Place one white candy bead at the center of the star. If you feel fancy and have a steady hand you can make the star a little more petal shaped. But don’t stress, it need not be perfect.

4. When the tops have dried/hardened you are ready to fill the whoopie pies. Place filling (recipe below) in a zip lock bag and snip the corner. Be sure to only snip a teeny bit or the filling will come out FAST. Pipe filling onto the flat side of the bottoms  in a tight spiral, stopping about 1/4 inch from the edge. You could also pipe a mound of about 3/4 tsp filling per Whoopie pie. Place the top on, smush down a bit and set the Whoopie pie in a baking cup.

 

My Grandmother’s Yellow Cake Batter Recipe:

5 cups flour

1/2 cup butter

• 2 cups sugar
• 5 eggs
• 5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 c milk
• 1 c soup cream
• 2 tsp vanilla
• optional: grated zest of one lemon or orange

Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer. Add eggs & vanilla. Alternate remaining wet and dry ingredients as you mix. Mix till all ingredients are incorporated but don’t overmix.

Martha Stewart’s Royal Icing Recipe   – This is a pretty reliable recipe. I suggest you place the icing into a squeezable plastic container for ease of drizzling.

Classic Marshmallow Filling Recipe (adapted from Epicurious):

Beat all the following together in an electric mixer:

•  1 stick of butter, room temp
• 2 cups plus a couple of extra spoonfuls of Marshmallow fluff
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

 

Packing it up:

We boxed our pies in plain white windowed bakery boxes garnished with a small natural seashell.  We tied each box with organza ribbon and included a handwritten note on a starfish tag. “Whoopie! It’s Summer!”. I stuck in a gift card as well for favorite and “main” teachers.

If I were to make these again I might consider sprinkling little white non pareils balls on the icing and/or making chocolate shells to go with. I would also consider subbing melted white chocolate for the icing. Then again, I might just do it exactly the same, now that it’s all figured out.

This was a super easy and extremely pretty gift package thanks to that handy little Whoopie Pie maker. Impulse item FTW!  I’ll be using it again and again.