A state where whoopie pies take the cake

“Whoopie pies have become part of why people come to Maine,’’ one baker declared as the debate was raging. For those whoopie pie pilgrims, here’s a guide to some of whoopie piedom’s southern Maine high spots.

A nondescript brick storefront at the edge of Lewiston hardly looks like the Bethlehem of the whoopie pie. But family-owned Labadie’s Bakery has been making whoopie pies since 1925. “We were the first in Maine,’’ said Dawn Proctor, who was working the retail counter one recent morning, but declined to speculate on whether Maine or Pennsylvania can lay claim to whoopie pie primacy. “It’s so simple I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t make them,’’ she said.

Fresh trays of whoopie pies filled the display cases next to doughnuts, cream horns, and other bakery standbys. The biggest seller, Proctor said, remains the classic of two rounds of chocolate cake with a thick layer of white frosting in between. The bakery also makes a chocolate chip whoopie (yellow cake with chocolate chips), a vanilla (plain yellow cake), peanut butter (chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting), and a marvelously old-fashioned “pink’’ whoopie pie, which is a vanilla cake with a raspberry layer on top covered with coconut flakes.

People who grew up in the area pop in for a regular fix and there are converts all the time. As we were leaving, Rebecca Hill, who moved to Lewiston recently from South Carolina, stopped by for a classic. “We don’t have whoopie pies there,’’ she lamented. “I’ve become addicted.’’