The Whoopie Pie is an increasingly more popular favorite in the bakery and snacking world. It essentially boils down to being a baked product that one can refer to as a cookie, pie or cake. The product consists of two round mound-shaped pieces of (most frequently) chocolate soft cake (though increasingly gingerbread, pumpkin red velvet, &tc.) that sandwiches a sweet, creamy filling or icing.
The origins of the treat are confused, or, are at the very least muddied with many regions laying claim. The treat is considered a New England classic and/or a Pennsylvania Amish tradition, they have spread in their ingestion to pints all across the country. The whoopie pie is the official state treat of Maine. Maine also created the world’s largest whoopie pie (South Portland, Maine) weighing at 1,062 pounds!. Annual whoopie pie festivals are held all over the nation, throughout New England and in the Amishlands of Central Pennsylvania.
Four states lay claim to being the originator of the whoopie pie (Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire). The Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau notes that the whoopie pie recipe comes from the area’s Amish and Pennsylvania German culture, peoples who have not left a detailed record of where and when, thus difficulty in tracing an exact date. Bakeries in Maine, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania all have been selling the treat since the 1920s.
Maine’s obsession with whoopie pies has gone so far as the Maine State Legislature considering to name the whoopie pie the official state pie in their Legislative branch in 2011. The proposal received bipartisan support. L.D. 71, officially known as An Act to Designate the Whoopie Pie as the State Dessert, basically stated that the whoopie pie is the official state dessert. Controversy swirled around this effort as the Maine Legislature eventually decided to declare the whoopie pie the official state treat, and chose blueberry pie (made with wild Maine blueberries) as the official state dessert.
We here at Hilsher’s General Store offer the whoopie pie and many other baked items—all made from scratch in our own kitchen—like, shoofly pie, seasonal pies, cookies, snack cakes and so much more. We also have hand dipped Hershey’s ice cream.
For more information on our bakery in Snyder County and what we have for sale, call us at 570-374-1550 or contact us.