If you’ve grown up with whoopie pies then you know how good they are. The cake-like texture of the “cookies” and the simple vanilla flavor of the filling. It’s just perfect! While the usual is to have chocolate cookies this recipe is a change of pace with pistachio instead.

There is some pistachio pudding mix for flavor and texture, but there’s also plenty of chopped pistachios as well. At first I had my doubts that they would have a good flavor, but trust me when I say that these are a pistachio-lover’s dream sandwich cookie.

The batter is more like a cake batter than cookie dough, but that’s all part of the plan. The end result is that they are light, fluffy, and spread to the correct size during baking.

The pudding mix will add some green color, but I added a few drops of extra food coloring for a subtle green color. This is completely optional, but resulted in a nice, mellow shade of green.

Then fold in the chopped pistachios and drop by spoonfuls onto lined baking sheets. The parchment paper here really is required. I tried it without it for one batch and found that even using a non-stick pan they stuck a bit. Also, make sure to space them out. For a 9″x13″ pan I found that I could fit 6 on each, which meant I had to do multiple rounds in the oven. It was worth it, though, to have perfect edges.

Allow the cookies to cool while you mix up the filling, which has marshmallow fluff as its main ingredient.

The photo above is how not to do the filling! Dear reader, it was hot in the kitchen when I made these and I was overly ambitious with how much filling I thought each pie could hold. Learn from my mistakes- don’t over-fill the pies or else the filling might drip all over the place.

I love this variation on the classic whoopie pie and it really does have that wonderful pistachio flavor in every bite. They might be even better than the original!