Whoopie Pies
Labadies's Bakery
Maine’s official state treat is the whoopie pie, but with two mounded palm-sized chocolate cakes sandwiching a creamy filling, it’s not a pie at all.
The whoopie pie’s origins are murky, and to this day embroiled in controversy. Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia all claim to be the birthplace of the dessert, but Maine’s connection to the dessert runs especially deep.
Labadie’s Bakery, an institution in downtown Lewiston for more than a century, claims to be the originator of the whoopie pie, saying that in its first year of business in 1925, a baker randomly created it and it became an instant classic. Still in business today, the bakery continues to make whoopie pies using its original recipe of cocoa, buttermilk, flour, sugar, and vanilla.
While its origins may be debated, there’s no debate that the whoopie pie is beloved in Maine: There’s an annual whoopie pie festival in Dover-Foxcroft, and the state has set a couple of world records associated with the dessert. For example, when the whoopie pie became the state’s official treat in 2011, Maine created a record-setting whoopie pie. Coming in at over a 1,000 pounds, the confection was cut up and sold to raise funds to send Maine-made whoopie pies to troops overseas. Twelve years later, the world record for the longest line of whoopie pies was set when 2,121 whoopie pies were arranged in the design of a giant whoopie pie on the front plaza at Hadlock Field in Portland.
Still made across the state by home bakers, there are also a number of commercial bakeries making them who have expanded the cake and cream flavors from plain chocolate and vanilla cream to pumpkin, mint chocolate, banana cream, strawberry, and more.