“Big whoop! 2 states vie over rights to tasty treat” |
| Big whoop! 2 states vie over rights to tasty treat Posted: 03 Mar 2011 10:17 PM PST The whoopie pie consists of two round pieces of chocolate cake, icing and, of late, controversy. Lancaster County, Pa., and Maine are fighting a whoopie-pie war, battling over who can lay claim to a confection that both places say is a regional delicacy. The first salvo was fired in January, when a bill to make the whoopie pie Maine's official state dessert was filed in the Legislature. After all, the state was home last summer to a whoopie-pie festival, and a former governor declared the fourth Saturday in June Whoopie Pie Day. "It's sold all over Maine, in every corner of the state," said Amos Orcutt, president of the Maine Whoopie Pies Association and the University of Maine Foundation. "A lot of alumni I've spoken with said, 'I remember these whoopie pies.' These are people who are 80, 90 years old eating whoopie pies when they were young." Labadie's Bakery in Lewiston, Maine, claims on its website that it has been making "The original (not a copy) Maine Whoopie Pie since 1925!" But the treat, whose name is of uncertain origin, has long been an Amish country staple, and Pennsylvania is not eager to hand over such bragging rights. The Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau has created a website where readers are urged to "Save our Whoopie!" It claims Maine is trying to "steal our treat" in an "act of confectionery larceny." One group staged a rally last month in Lancaster. It was "making note of the fact that Lancaster County is most notably the home of the whoopie pie," said restaurant owner John Smucker. In Maine, where the legislation is to be voted on in the next few weeks, there is dissent in the whoopie-pie ranks. Donald Pilon, a state representative from Saco, objects to honoring the whoopie pie, believing a dessert made from large amounts of shortening and sugar should not be heralded when one-third of Maine children are obese. "Whoopie pie, it's not even a pie," Pilon said. "It's two pieces of cake with frosting in the middle." The legislation was recently amended, he said, to call the whoopie pie the state treat, rather than dessert, in light of his objections. Orcutt thinks the bill will prevail and the dispute will rage on. "They're really having a meltdown," he said of the detractors in Pennsylvania, "and they're somewhat deprived because they don't have lobsters and they don't have the wild Maine blueberry, so they're clinging on to this whoopie pie." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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