Kuya brought this up yesterday as we were eating a chocolate cupcake, where the cake part was very dense and sweet, and the icing melted in your mouth.
When he was a kid growing up near Johnstown, their favorite snack was Gobs.
Gobs, you say?
Where I grew up they were called Whoopie Pies.
it is two cakes with the icing part in the middle of the cakes. Usually the cakes are chocolate, but in other areas they use various cakes and filling for their Whoopie pies.
from WTAE Pittsburgh:
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — JR Harris' uncle told an employee a story about the origins of the gob. He said a worker for his family's bakery was on break. They were permitted to make and eat anything they wanted to at the bakery. "He had two small chocolate cakes and put icing in between," Harris said. "And then the company saw what he had done and started doing what he did with the gob cake."
The term gob was trademarked in 1927 by the Harris-Boyer bakery.
Gobs are inherently part of the fabric of (western) Pennsylvania's culinary landscape....
,In the 1930s, the sailor-boy image associated with the Johnstown gob was developed for the wrapper.
Gob can also be used as a synonym for sailor, though no one with any knowledge of the company knows if that was why it was given its original name. "Gob" was also used within the mining industry in reference to refuse coal. It is possible that miners gave the dessert its name in the region.
a similar confection is called whoopie pie and has it's origin in Amish cooking, or maybe the confection came to America with German immigrants.
Susan Kalcik, a folklorist and archivist in Johnstown, said the recipe for gobs traces back to Germany in the middle ages. She thinks the recipe was brought to the United States by immigrants.
so why was this popular in Johnstown area?
Regardless of where it was started, it was perfect for coal miners in Somerset and Cambria counties who didn't want their lunchtime dessert's icing to melt on the wrapper. Kalcik said gobs predate any bakery's claim to have created it.
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