UMaine celebrating state treat with Whoopie Pie Mountain
Bakers at the University of Maine Dining Services serve up an average of 20,000 whoopie pies, with some four different flavors, each year on campus. Not that anyone’s counting. On Wednesday, Sept. 28, the popular sandwich-size cake with a sweet frosting inside becomes the official state treat. At Hilltop Dining, chefs, cooks, bakers, staff and students will celebrate the designation by preparing a “Mountain of Whoopie Pies,” a four-foot-tall replica of Mount Katahdin made with 1,500 whoopie pies. The display will include at the base of the mountain whoopie pies with blue frosting to resemble the Penobscot River, and different flavors and colors — pumpkin, chocolate chip, blueberry and a white cake with chocolate frosting filling — will form the rest of the state’s famous mile-high outcrop.
UMaine President Paul Ferguson and Amos Orcutt, the president of the Maine Whoopie Pie Association whose primary job is president and CEO of the University of Maine Foundation, will be among several who will celebrate the whoopie pie on the day, 90 days from passage of bill LD71, when the whoopie pie becomes the Maine state treat.
A photos session and brief remarks are scheduled at 4 p.m., shortly before pieces of the mountain of cake, frosting and imagery are carried off on plates and trays between 4:30-8 p.m. Whoopie pies will be free for UMaine students with Dining Service meal plans and for the minimal charge for a meal, with a whoopie pie dessert, for others.
Rep. Paul Davis, a Republican from Sangerville, co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Emily Cain, a Democrat from Orono, showing bipartisan support for Orcutt’s initiative.
The idea for the whoopie pie celebration at UMaine came up as a Dining Service events committee considered what to do for a fall “monotony breaker” event. “They decided to do a whoopie pie mountain with different flavored and colored whoopie pies and food coloring,” says Glenn Taylor, Black Bear Dining’s director of culinary services.
A small event quickly became a larger event as word of the whoopie pie mountain spread, explains Melissa Lewis, Hilltop Dining Service manager. The mountain would not be just any mountain, but Mt. Katahdin. When Janet Waldron, UMaine’s vice president for administration and finance, heard about it, the former Maine Commissioner for Administration and Finance suggested holding the party on the day the whoopie pie becomes the state’s official treat.
Orcutt’s passion for acknowledging the whoopie pie as Maine’s edible icon came after reading a 2009 New York Times article alleging Pennsylvania was the originator of the dessert.
“It didn’t seem right, so I started checking around,” he says. He spoke with many aging Mainers who remembered their grandmothers baking and serving whoopie pies in the 1920s.
“My research went back to the 1920s,” he says. “Pennsylvania could only document whoopie pies back to the 1950s. People said, ‘Amos, you’ve got to do something about it.'”
In 2010, Orcutt bumped into Rep. Davis at a Dover-Foxcroft whoopie pie festival, a fundraiser for a local theater, and heard about an Ashland Community High School mock legislation day exercise, in which students proposed designating a Maine whoopie pie day and designate the treat as the official state dessert.
“It was almost a perfect storm,” says Orcutt. He persuaded then-Gov. John Baldacci to declare the fourth Saturday in June as “Maine Whoopie Pie Day.” And Davis made good on an earlier pledge to support legislation celebrating the whoopie pie, and the Maine State Whoopie Pie Association formed with Orcutt as chief advocate.
For all the sugar and spice in the recipe, the traditional chocolate cake with a creamy filling has noteworthy economic implications, say Orcutt, who argued at a legislative hearing that the time-honored whoopie pie should be declared the state dessert or treat.
“Some people seem surprised that legislators would hold a hearing on making the whoopie pie the state dessert,” Orcutt says in a whoopie pie association fact sheet. “The greater surprise should be why this didn’t occur before now. I would argue that the whoopie pie is more than a dessert. It is an important contributor to the Maine economy.”
The designation, he says, “will help hundreds of small businesses — the whoopie pie makers, bakers and storekeepers in every county in Maine. As testimony at the public hearing revealed the number of jobs associated with this industry, it is economic development at its finest.”
For those who cannot make the celebration at Hilltop, Dining Services plans to serve whoopie pies at York and Wells Central in Wednesday. For those who like to avoid sugar-saturated desserts, Lewis says the blueberry whoopie pies will have a cream cheese frosting inside.
Long time University of Maine nutritionist Katherine Musgrave also has supported Orcutt’s mission to elevate the status of the whoopie pie. “A dessert should be fun and enjoyable,” she says. “Don’t worry about the nutritional value — everyone needs a treat, especially during difficult times.”
Sept. 26, 2011
Contact: Glenn Taylor or Melissa Lewis, (207) 581-3463; George Manlove, 581-3756