Whoopieee !!! Are Whoopie Pies on Your Menu?

Whoopie pies break out

By Michelene Maynard, New York Times 04/21/2009

For generations, vacationers in Maine and visitors to Pennsylvania's Amish country have found a simple black-and-white snack in restaurants and convenience shops and on nearly every gas station counter: the whoopie pie.

...But in the past few years, whoopie pies have migrated across the country, often appearing in the same specialty shops and grocery aisles that recently made room for cupcakes. Last fall, they cracked the lineup at Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan, which helped turn cupcakes into a national craze...

...Nobody can pinpoint the reason the whoopie pie finally broke into the national consciousness. But the snacks evoke a more homespun era that seems to provide some comfort. "Pure edible nostalgia," the Williams-Sonoma catalog calls them...

...The whoopie pie would probably be Maine's state dessert, if the state had one. How the cookie traveled to Maine is a mystery, however. One theory holds that it was brought north through the Yummy Book, a recipe pamphlet first published in 1930 by Durkee-Mower, the Massachusetts company that makes Marshmallow Fluff.

But Don Durkee, whose father co-founded the firm, said the earliest appearance of whoopie pies in the pamphlets was during the 1970s. "I'm baffled," he said.

No matter how they arrived, they have been eaten by Maine residents for at least eight decades, said Oliver, who publishes Food History News, a monthly newsletter. Labadie's Bakery, in Lewiston, Maine, which sells whoopie pies as big as 16 inches across, claims to have sold them since 1925.

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