Treat of the Week: Whoopie Pies and Chocolate Ice Cream

Like most beloved and popular baked goods, there’s some debate between regions as to where the Whoopie Pie was first developed. These delectable confections which consist of fluffy icing sandwiched between two mounded, cake-like chocolate cookies, certainly came from New England originally. Some feel that they were developed in Maine while others assert that they come from Pennsylvania or even Massachusetts.

One popular legend states that Pennsylvania Amish women were the first to create Whoopie Pies using left-over cake batter. They are said to have put these tender sandwich cookies (which they called “hucklebucks”) into the lunches they packed for their farmer husbands who upon discovering their dessert would shout out a joyful, “Whoopie!”

Regardless of their origin, the Whoopie pie is a long-celebrated American treat which, in recent years, has become popular abroad as well. Mildly sweet, cakey and delicious, they are the perfect end to almost any meal. These lovely treats (which really can be considered a cake, a pie or a cookie) have also been mass-produced during the Twentieth-Century by international baking companies.

I’d never had a proper Whoopie Pie until this weekend when my mother baked up a batch for the first time. I must say, I quite enjoyed them and am looking forward to devouring the rest of the batch. As my parents have been putting their new ice cream maker to good use these past few weekends, our Whoopie Pies were accompanied by wonderful dark-chocolate homemade ice cream which very much  exactly reminded me of what I consider the best ice cream I’ve ever had—the chocolate ice cream at The Fountain Restaurant at London’s Fortnum & Mason in the City of Westminster.