America is a land rife with desserts that from around the world that have been adapted to suit local tastes. We dig up the lost Church supper classic, regional pot luck staples, and home-cooked favorites each week to bring a taste of our past into your kitchen.
Where better to hunt for a farm fresh recipe than the Heartland? A casual mention of Pluma Moos on the Greater Midwestern Foodways Alliance site lead me to dig deeper into this Mennonite tradition to uncover a versatile recipe that's perfect for the season. More
In my quest to capture American desserts, I've polled friends and relatives for favorites from their childhoods. Among Michiganders, especially those with Detroit roots, Sanders' Bumpy Cake commands some serious nostalgia points. What is Bumpy Cake? Short answer: addictive. Long answer: a Devil's Food Cake with stripes of sugary buttercream topped with "pourable fudge" frosting. Yes, pourable fudge frosting. More
Emboldened by recent pie success recreating my great aunt's favorite Lemon Chocolate Pie, I decided to tackle a classic beloved by many of my Midwestern friends—the Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie. Not only is it the easiest pie I've ever made, it's also one of the tastiest. More
In my mind some desserts are inextricably linked to certain people. Such is the case with my late great-Aunt Ida and her beloved Lemon Chocolate Pie. For the uninitiated, Lemon Chocolate Pie is a staple in New Haven, Connecticut bakeries, and a pie I've yet to encounter elsewhere. More
There's something delightfully macabre about eating foods shaped like adorable animals. Childhood is full of opportunities to bite the ears off of chocolate bunnies and take down an entire school of Goldfish in a single, satisfying crunch. Not surprisingly, Beatrice Harlib's 1952 Pillsbury Bakeoff Grand Prize-winning recipe for Snappy Turtle Cookies, pecan tortoises with buttery cookie bodies and chocolate frosted shells, was inspired by her own young son. More
When polling my friends for their favorite regional sweets, one of my pals from Utah mentioned loving "fried scones." Fried Scones. The very name brings to mind what might happen if you gave Brits access to the best of Paula Deen's archives. More
Why stop at regular 'crack' when, with a few little tweaks, you can jazz it up for the holiday? For each of these recipes, you'll add approximately one to one and a half cups of the coarsely chopped topping of your choice to the basic Matzoh Crack recipe. Mix, match and have fun! More
In the run up to Holy Week, the week before Easter, I was excited to discover capirotada, a spiced, syrup-based bread pudding that's a Lenten favorite in New Mexico and throughout the southwest. More
In honor of Girl Scout Cookie Week—and who am I kidding, the upcoming Mad Men Season 5 premiere—I wanted to take my favorite cookie and give it a decidedly 1960's dessert treatment, parfait-style, layering liquor-laced Grasshopper pie filling with my beloved Thin Mints. More
While Irish Americans have St. Patrick's Day, Italian Americans celebrate their own feast day, St. Joseph's Day, just two days later on March 19th. If you're lucky enough to grow up both Irish and Italian that means a couple days of nearly back-to-back feasting smack in the middle of the austerity of Lent. In honor of my grandmother, we would have Irish soda bread on St. Patrick's Day, and, for my grandfather, zeppole di San Guiseppe on St. Joseph's day. Suffice it to say that the Italians win at dessert-time feasting hands down. More
Sometimes you want pudding topped with whipped cream. Sometimes (make that most of the time, if you're like me) you'd rather have whipped cream topped with pudding. I imagine it was a like-minded home economist with a fondness for cream who came up with the recipe for "Pudding in a Cloud," a retro recipe consisting of chocolate Jell-O nestled in a cloud of Cool Whip. More
If you love Fluffernutters, you'll love this fudge, which packs plenty of peanut butter and marshmallow flavor into every bite. Traditional Soda Cracker Fudge recipes omit chocolate, but I say the addition of chocolate never hurt any dessert—especially not fudge. More
