{Heart Shaped}

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies!

These little guys would be the absolute PERFECT treat to give to those you love

for Valentine's Day!

It has a few steps, but the recipe is pretty straight forward.

Shall we?

Ingredients:

For the cookies:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tbsp. cocoa powder

½ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup buttermilk, at room temperature

1 oz. red food coloring

Ingredients:

For the frosting:

8 oz. cream cheese

5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Preheat Your Oven to 375!

Using a template, trace evenly spaced heart shapes on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Set aside.

In a medium bowl combine your flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.

In the bowl of your mixer, combine your butter and brown sugar until it's light and fluffy.

Something like this.

Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Then you want to slowly add your dry ingredients, 1/3 at a time, alternating with the buttermilk.

After it is all blended, add in your food coloring.

Now you'll want to transfer your batter into a pastry bag.

If you don't have one you can just do like me and use a Ziploc bag.

To make it easy for myself, I put into a pint glass like this...

Then pour in the batter...

and twist the top until you have something like this...

Snip off the end and start to fill in your heart shapes.

Bake about 7-9 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Now, to make the filling you'll want to beat together your butter and cream cheese

(maybe go grab your stretchy pants...)

mix in your vanilla and gradually add the powdered sugar.

Like the pie batter, you'll want to transfer the filling to a pastry bag 

so you can pipe it in between your little sammies.

You may want to stash a few of these in a secret hiding place, 

because I promise they'll be gone in NO time.

See, a perfect little love treat.