Spiced Whoopie Pies

It is with absolute pleasure that I write this post. I am hosting the Feb '14 episode of the Home Bakers Challenge, another brain child of the ever so creative Priya Suresh.
In keeping with the occurence of Valentine's day I presented a variety of "to-bake" items to all those who were willing to participate. The underlying theme was to bake stuff which were different from the regular V-day fare including
1) French Macaroons
2)  Whoopie Pies
3) Neapolitan Cakes
4) Cheesecake Cupcakes
The main reason for choosing the list above were because I wanted to try out eggless versions of all of these. For various reasons my baking has become few and far between, therefore I managed to concoct only one bake. I had to choose the easiest recipe, for reasons strong, and since I cannot eat cheese at the moment I chose Whoopie Pies!

Before I ventured out to make a red velvet whoopie pie or any other sweet whoopie pie, I took a vote and my family unanimously chose a spicy fare. So I twisted the ingredients around to get a spicy cookie halves and even used onion-chive cream cheese filling for one. It turned out delicious. This was really a rare case of having only a few minutes before all the cookies and whoopie pies were cleaned off the plate! My joy knew no bounds! The aroma of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg is exactly what you need in your house on a cold winter's day and mine was snowing to boot.

Spiced Whoopie Pies

Servings: 20 cookies or 10 Whoopie pies
Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 12 mins

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups All purpose flour
3/4 cup Cane Sugar  (Or 1/2 cup Cane Sugar and 1/2 cup dark molasses)
3 tsp grated fresh Ginger (or 2 tsp Ground ginger)
1 tsp ground Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Salt
1/3 cup Vegetable Oil
1/4 cup Yogurt
1/3 cup Boiling water

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
3. Combine flour, sugar, (molasses if used), ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, baking soda in a bowl
4. Mix in oil, yogurt until well combined
5. Pour in boiling water and mix until smooth
6. Drop dough in balls on prepared cookie sheet with 1 inch space between each
7. Bake in oven for about 12 mins untill slightly puffy and golden
8. The cookies will be soft when removed from the oven and will continue to harden a bit. 
9. Cool on the cookie sheet for 5-7 mins before cooling completely on a rack
10. Once the cookies have cooled completely apply filling on the bottom of a cookie and place another similar sized cookie on top of the filling. 
11. Chill it for 10 mins in the fridge if its gets a little runny or is a warm day
12. I used store bought cream cheese and Nutella for the filling. The sweet of the chocolate and then tang of the cream cheese blended perfectly with the spiced cookies!