I always have visions of making the perfect twee desserts. In these visions, I’m just whipping up adorable cakes and gorgeous candies offhandedly, like oh the house is kind of a mess in a shabby chic way but hey I’m going to make and decorate a cake that’s shaped like an English cottage with tiny people peeping through the window AND I’m going to do it with stuff I have on hand.

Also in these visions:

I never have to go to the store.

I never forget anything at the store.

I never have to go back to the store a second time because I forgot something else that I forgot to get the first time I went back.

I do better with cookies and things that tend to look a little oh, let’s say rustic, just naturally. I am not sure if whoopie pies fall into this category or not but I am happy to report that my first experience making them was nearly as effortless as my fevered baking dreams!

A long while ago I bought a can of dulce de leche and it’s been sitting around in my pantry next to a can of sweetened condensed milk, waiting for me to make tres leche cake, I suppose. Obviously I haven’t done that, and last week I opened the can on impulse so we could drizzle caramel over some apple crisp I’d made when we had my parents over to dinner. Dulce de leche doesn’t really “drizzle” of course but if you add some milk to it and hot it up in the microwave it does all right.

So there I was with all this dulce de leche (and no desire to make tres leche cake). I went a-Googlin’ and came up with a recipe for dulce de leche whoopie pies. I’d never made (or actually…never eaten) a whoopie pie before but I gather they are somewhat trendy now? Like cake pops and macarons. Anyone too cool for cupcakes is probably housing a whoopie pie. Anyway.

I was surprised how easy these came off. In this recipe, I skipped the pisco/rum that was called for, and used heavy cream instead of buttermilk because I had some that needed to be used. I overbought marshmallow fluff (one 7 oz. jar will work just fine) but other than that, these didn’t require too much special fussing.

One thing: I would not want to attempt these without parchment paper/a Silpat or a pastry bag. I use the disposable Wilton kind that you can buy at craft stores by the dozen, but I have also used a gallon Ziploc with one corner cut off. For stuff like this, that will work just fine.

So: Bake the cookie/cake, pipe in filling, smash together, done.

They are very good. Usually I’m not a huge proponent of boxed cake mix but I happened to have a box in the cupboard and it made this recipe extra-super easy.

I want to make very very dark chocolate ones with Oreo-style filling! And yes I know I could just buy Oreo Cakesters but that’s no fun.