Nancy Griffin - Making Whoopies: The Official Whoopie Pie Book

LABREE'S BAKERY

A book about whoopie pies? I hear you ask. Is there really that much to say about whoopie pies? The answer is a whopping yes!

The moment of the whoopie pie is now. These sweet treats are the ultimate comfort food. Theyre unpretentious and home-grown, nothing like highbrow crpes and souffls. Even the name is cheerful and uplifting. The definitions for whoopie (or whoopee ) include an exclamation of joy or excitement. Making whoopie means to engage in a noisy, boisterous celebration. These definitions all aptly describe the human interaction with the whoopie pie: eating a fistful of whoopie pie in all its squishy, creamy sweetness is certainly joyful, can be exciting, and is absolutely celebratory.

Of course, the phrase making whoopie is also a euphemism used by the entertainment industry in the early days to suggest amorous activity while circumventing the censors. Some whoopie pie aficionados may in fact equate eating whoopies with its more salacious connotation.

This book will tell you everything you want to know about the wonderful whoopie, from its debated origins to its modern-day adaptations. And the more than a dozen recipes will have you making some whoopies (the edible kind) of your own. Happy reading, baking, and, most important, eating!

A whoopie pies a wondrous thing,
Like newborn pups or early spring.
It fi lls the mouth with rapture sweet,
This yummy chocolate sandwich treat.

Anonymous

The whoopie pie is a nearly perfect food, if you ignore pesky little details such as calories or cholesterol. For those who love sweets, especially dark, devils food chocolate cake and lush, creamy vanilla filling, the whoopie pie is the ultimate dessert.

Its certainly not a pie, by any stretch of the imagination. But then, neither is a Boston cream pie.

A traditional whoopie pie consists of two soft, mounded, dark chocolate cakes, each resembling the top of a well-rounded chocolate hamburger bun, generously filled with creamy white filling. Sometimes the filling layer is nearly as thick as the cake around it, making for a gooey eating experience that leaves fingers, faces, and everything within reach streaked or coated with white stuff. And thats half the fun.

There ends any agreement about what constitutes a real whoopie pie. Aficionados, however, argue over which ingredients were found in the original filling. Believe it or not, these treats have incited lots of discussion and passion in recent years as whoopie pie fame spreads across the country.

Even the name is not consistent, although it is not cause for dispute. In parts of Pennsylvaniaresidents say primarily in the central part of the statewhoopie pies are called gobs. (Its clear why whoopie pie , and not that other name, is sweeping the country.)

WHOOPIE WISDOM

There are those who say the whoopie pie is the same as a moon pie, a popular snack from the southern United States, but the two are distinctly different. Moon pies are flat, hard cookies filled with marshmallow, then the entire things dipped in chocolate. They, too, have a long history and a few fanciful tales about their origins, but were not going to tell them.

JEFF SCHER

Once upon a time, hardly anyone outside New England, parts of Pennsylvania, and relocated Amish communities in other states had ever heard of a whoopie pie, but now these delectables can be found as far away as California, Texas, and Michigan. Upscale Manhattan bakeries make them. A recipe even turned up on a food blog originating in Newfoundland, Canada. Celebrity chefs sing their praises. They have been featured in national publications, high-profile TV shows, and theyre on food sites all over the Web.

Theyve arrived.

WHOOPIE WISDOM

A WHOOPIE
IS NOT
A COOKIE

The cake parts of the whoopie pie are sometimes called soft cookies, but theyre usually really soft and not really very cookielike at all.

HERSHEY FARMS RESTAURANT AND INN

Whoopie Wrap-Up

There used to be a traditional whoopie pie, which is not a pie at all, but is round and made of chocolate cake with white filling (and an everlasting debate over the real filling ingredients) that originated in one of three places (more on that next) at some unknown time, possibly around the 1920s but maybe later, and it might be called a gob. Nowadays there exists a dizzying array of cake and filling flavors, and the occasional whoopie pie is not even round.

Whence Whoopies?

For many, the true history of the whoopie pie is about pride in the productMainers, Pennsylvanians, and Bostonians all claim the fame of having invented the beloved whoopie. And while people in all of those locations have theories and hold strong beliefs, so far no one has shown incontrovertible proof of the whoopie pies origin.