Individually wrapped in plastic or cellophane and sold at seafood shacks and in grocery stores for a dollar or two, a whoopie pie is two tender disks of dark chocolate cake with a layer of sugary white crème (not cream) or Marshmallow Fluff in between— like a large, soft Oreo cookie. It has become known throughout much of the United States, but for many years it was a local specialty of both the Downeast coast and Pennsylvania Dutch country— each of which is credited with its origin.
A whoopie pie in its rightful place: On a picnic table along the Downeast shore on a sunny summer day.
The New England story is that it was introduced in 1927 by the Berwick Cake Company (which, two years before, had created the Devil Dog). At the time, Eddie Cantor was starring in a musical play in Boston called “Whoopie.” During the performance, chocolate pies were tossed into the audience as Cantor sang the hit song “Making Whoopie.” It is unclear whether the cake or the song was named first and inspired the other.
The alternative account of whoopie pie’s genesis is that when Amish women served them to their husbands or children, the recipients were so delighted that they shouted “Whoopie!” Before the exclamation became its name, the pastry was called a hucklebuck (a term that has since been applied to the sexual congress known as Position of the Wife of Indra of the Kama Sutra and in 1949 was the title of a Chubby Checker song that contained the lyrics, “Wiggle like a snake, wobble like a duck / That’s what you do when you do the Hucklebuck”).