The trick to this recipe is finding a mini-egg cake pan. I bought a set of pans (for both top and bottom of cakes…the bottom cakes had a little flat indent in the egg so it won’t roll around) off of amazon for about $80. I figured I can also use these for easter and other such things and they are heavy duty and will last forever, so why not? They make 25 cakes each tray so the trays are big and the cakes are little. I loved the size of these little cakes (about 2 inch long). They were the perfect 2-biter dessert (…or 1-biter if you’re like my brother). You can obviously make them a bit bigger with a larger size of mold. You can get smaller trays online for around the $20 range (if you don’t need 50 cakes at once) and you can just do multiple batches.

Chocolate Pumpkin Maple Cream Whoopie Pies
Makes about 50 whoopie pies
Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¾ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup dark brown sugar
¾ cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin
½ cup milk

Filling
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 7-ounce jar marshmallow fluff/creme
2 teaspoons maple extract

Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through baking. The cakes will puff up quite a bit but they keep their football shape quite nicely! Cool cakes completely on baking sheets/molds. Using metal spatula, remove cakes from parchment (cakes should just slide out of molds).
Repeat with any remaining batter.Prepare your cakes by cutting them carefully in half long-ways (see pictures). Take a look at your two sides…..they look different. The part of the cake that was touching the pan will be pretty and smooth (as shown in the pictures) and the top of the cake that was exposed to the air may look a bit rough. What I did was pair up the bottom of a cake with another bottom of a cake (and the tops with other tops ) so that each individual whoopie pie would match. I thought it would be kind of weird to serve 2 different looking football cakes at the same party so I just took half (all the ones using the bottoms) to one party and half (all the ones using the tops) to another (or you can save half for yourself for your personal after-game snack). There is probably a really easy and much better solution to this but this is what I did for now. 🙂

Filling Directions:
Using a stand mixture, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the marshmallow crème and maple extract and beat until well
blended for a couple minutes on medium speed. This is the right amount of extract. It seemed like a whole lot so I just did a little at a time and ended up using it all (if not a little splash more….oopsies. 🙂 You can do this a couple hours ahead of time and leave at room temperature until ready to use. The mixture will look off-white due to the maple extract but it looks light enough against the dark cakes.
Put filling into a large ziplock bag but leave some out to pipe the laces. Snip off end with a good sized hole. Pipe filling onto flat side of a cake. Top with the flat side of another cake. Repeat with remaining cakes and filling. There was enough filling for 50 cakes.