What’s the secret to an award-winning whoopie pie?

Jim Harper likes to individually wrap each and every one of his award-winning whoopie pies in plastic. It helps protect them from ceiling dust, errant sneezes and the freshness-sapping power of the very air we breath.

He’s a thinker, always worried about the variables, always trying to come up with a way to make something better. You see, the unpleasant truth about food — good food, anyway— is that it’s essentially one big math problem, all additions and subtractions and everything else you thought you hired an accountant to handle.

Harper actually prefers to think of it more like a chemistry experiment. During a Thanksgiving break from his job in the warehouse at Lion Surplus, he prepared a gluten- and dairy-free vegan chocolate cake at his sister’s house in Florida. Putting aside for a moment the headache of finding adequate substitutes for eggs and milk, Harper also had to take into account the area’s lower elevation as relative to Centre County.

“Do you beat it longer? Do you beat it less? Do you add the liquid here versus there?” Harper said.

He’s not finished tinkering with the recipe yet. It played well in Florida — went over like gangbusters, in fact— but those folks live at sea level and the palettes of Pennsylvania Furnace do not. Harper happens to be of the opinion that you can always make something better — even chocolate cake.

As far as North stars go, a fellow could do worse. Harper recently brought home a blue ribbon from the Pennsylvania’s Greatest Whoopie Pie Contest for a riff on his grandmother’s peanut butter and chocolate infused recipe. She was the one who gave a young Harper his first peek behind the kitchen curtains, the secret to the trick, so to speak.

“Whatever she touched, it was like magic. It tasted great,” Harper said.

He’s tried to pass some of that along to his own kids so the rest of their adult lives aren’t spent at the mercy of Betty Crocker. If you went with them to a party, they could probably give you a couple of reasons why the cake on the table is maybe a little bit too brown in places, although Harper would prefer that they didn’t.

Family is important and it almost caused him to skip this year’s whoopie pie contest altogether. Harper’s father died in November after a grueling week in hospice.

“I wasn’t in the mood. I was just off,” Harper said.

He made 20 whoopie pies but didn’t find his swing again until late into the batch. His expectations going into the contest were low — Florida’s elevation low.

Harper didn’t even think that he cracked the the top 20 until he heard the announcer place Centre County in the winner’s slot.

“I was really cheered up. I couldn’t believe it,” Harper said.

He should have. In Harper’s world, you can always make something better.

This story was originally published January 25, 2018 at 9:07 AM with the headline "What’s the secret to an award-winning whoopie pie?."