July 4, 2026
The annual fourth of July Denmark parade was held on a warm summer day with a light wind blowing making it feel more comfortable than it really was. Marching for the Denmark Hikers were, as promised, Phil Johnson and Tom Dugas,, with the surprize accompaniment of Posey Moulton and her mother Mary Lou Moulton who rode on the Denmark Church’s float.
The church ladies served lobster rolls and whoopie pies made according to their time honored but private recipe.
A bit more about Whoopie Pies:
Four states claim that whoopie pies originated within their state lines: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
The later state claims they were invented by the Amish, the kind of claim that sells well with tourists. In that story the Amish wives would puddle leftover cake batter on cookie sheets and frost them into sandwiches. This story. Like those from other states, suggest that these sandwiches were packed into lunch pails, and the recipients would shout “Whoopie” when they discovered their surpise desserts. Or was it school kids who shouted ‘whoopie’ when they found a treat in their lunchbox?
Equally plausible stories suggest prudent Maine housewives came up with the idea first but it probably doesn’t matter to us really.
There are some good arguments to say neither Pennsylvania nor Massachusetts housewives were the true originators.
William Woys Weaver who wrote the history of Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine openly concedes that Pennsylvania was not the first state to make whoopie pies. He was certain that Amish bakers didn’t start making them until the 1960s or perhaps as late as the 1970s.
Then there is food historian Lynne Oliver who obsessively cataloged the chronology of food history who says there is zero evidence to suggest Pennsylvania originated whoopie pies.
Those who devotedly believe that whoopie pies migrated north from Massachusetts often claim that the recipe was printed in “The Yummy Book, a recipe pamphlet published in 1930 by Durkee-Mower, the Massachusetts company that makes Marshmallow Fluff. These believers claim that a recipe for “Amish Whoopie Pie” was included in the 1930 edition. But as Mainers well know, repeating a falsehood over and over doesn’t make it true,
A relatively NY Times 2009 article by Micheline Maynard references Don Durkee whose father co-founded the fluff firm and the idea they published the recipe so early. https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9F05EEDA1739F93BA25750C0A96F9C8B63.htmlAfter checking the company’s collection of pamphlets, the earliest appearance of Whoopie Pies he found was during the 1970s. “I’m baffled,”’ he said. link to NYTimes
If you live in Maine, it is a known fact that the first commercially produced whoopie pies came from Labadie’s Bakery in Lewiston, Maine. The bakery first started making them in either 1918 or 1925 (there is debate about the dates). The most widely distributed brand of whoopie pies comes from Maine — Wicked Whoopies is made and sold by Isamax Snacks of Gardiner, Maine.
If you aren’t from here, you might wrongly believe the Berwick Cake Company, located in Roxbury, Massachusetts, was the first whoopie bakery as they also started selling “Whoopee Pies” in the 1920s and officially branded the name in 1928. Whatever….
To better stake a claim to Whoopie Pies, the Maine State Legislature officially declared the whoopie pie its official state treat in 2011.
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