In just fifteen minutes, a panel of celebrity judges (including Molly Moon Nietzel and Christopher Frizzelle) will be judging a Whoopie Pie Bake-Off at Oddfellows Cafe.

As born-and-bred Mainer—Maine is probably the second-biggest whoopie-pie hotbed in the world, after Pennsylvania—I have been watching this whole gourmet whoopie-pie trend with a suspicious eye. The point of whoopie pies is that they are cheap, sweet, and straightforward baked goods; you can manipulate a cupcake a million different ways and it's still a cupcake. Once you start messing with the classic whoopie pie dynamic—frosting between two small chocolate cakes—you've made something else entirely.

That said, I'm going to pick a favorite in this Bake-Off: Owen Curtsinger is a fellow Maine expatriate who appears to have a suitable amount of respect for the whoopie pie (the improved Maine state flag you see on this post is from his website). He's working on a variation on the recipe that could potentially revolutionize whoopie pie technology forever. I'm not going to spoil his secret ingredients, but as a lifelong whoopie pie fan, I'll say this: It's so crazy it just might work.