Chocolate Sliders w/ Honey Spice Buttercream filling (aka Whoopies)

Last October for my brother's birthday, instead of giving Mr.I-have-everything-I-need a monetary gift, I decided to bake him something. Every year, for his birthday (and of course for Thanksgiving) there has to be a Sara Lee pumpkin pie baking in the oven. Sara Lee, you ask? Yes. My parents were Mexican immigrants (no, they're not dead, just American citizens now) and marveled at all the things that came in packages: oatmeal, french toast, macaroni and cheese, pie. So Rene won't have it any other way, he must have his packaged frozen Sara Lee pumpkin pie.
Knowing he loves pumpkin pie, I decided to make him something called "Pumpkin Whoopies" which I found on popsugar.com's food section, yumsugar.com. Since I couldn't remember their names and they looked like raw little burgers to me, I called them "sliders." They were so easy to make, so tasty, and so darn cute, that I made them again and again.
This year, my BA (best amiga) Kelly said her friend and her were throwing an appetizer's party. My immediate thought was: can I please make dessert?! I had been mulling around the idea of using a specific frosting I'd baked a cake with (for this very same amiga's Halloween party) three years ago. I thought to myself: what would be good with a honey spice butter cream frosting other than pumpkin? Chocolate was the most feasible answer I came up with.
So, armed with my blog links and a go-head from Kelly and gang, I proceeded to make my chocolate whoopies with honey spice butter cream frosting. I'd looked far and wide and was torn between using this recipe, from Sunshine Mom via Food BUzz and this recipe from Cakespy, but I ended up using Sunshine Mom's because of the buttermilk ingredient. I'd only used buttermilk once and it failed, so I thought I'd give it another go. So here is the result:

Halfway through the process.



Um, yum! (I did end up eating the remaining of the batter, couldn't let it go to waste!)



Now its time for frosting after they cooled:





I had to take a bite, to taste of course!



And the conclusion: I thought it was really tasty. I liked how the chocolate was spungy. This is the second time I've mixed together two recipes I'd separately, but the first time I'd taken a risk and used something that wasn't specifically for the inside of a whoopie. I thought the mix of flavors was delicious, however, the consistency of the filling was not to my liking. I'm not pastry chef so I don't understand the science behind it, but baking in my kitchen the size of a normal person's closet, no A/C and in the middle of Portland's summer heat wave, was probably not the best choice of butter cream. I had to put it in the fridge for it to harden because any feel of heat, would make it start melting. So when I decide to make another flavored whoopie, I'll be sure to pay attention to what kind of frosting it is and what weather we are having. Plus, it was just a LOT of butter, but ever so tasty! As an experiment, I put a couple in the freezer, you know, in case I get a craving for a chocolate honey spice slider at a future date.