Apple Pie: The Golden Standard of American Baking
Nothing screams American tradition quite like apple pie. No discussion about America’s favorite dessert can begin without mentioning the iconic apple pie. Often associated with the saying “as American as apple pie,” this dessert has roots that reach deep into the nation’s history. Grandma’s apple pie wasn’t just dessert – it was love served warm with a flaky crust.
As apple orchards flourished across the nation, apple pie emerged as a beloved dessert showcasing local produce and cooking traditions. The beauty of this classic lies in its simplicity. Just apples, sugar, cinnamon, and that perfect buttery crust that Grandma could roll out blindfolded.
Modern baking experts rave about the technique required for the perfect pie crust. I would say that New York cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, and pumpkin pie are the most famous American desserts. The key was keeping everything cold and working quickly – something every grandmother knew by heart.
Moreover, during the 1940s and World War II, apple pie’s portrayal as a symbol of home and comfort helped cement its iconic status. Those wartime bakers made do with rationed ingredients, proving that necessity truly is the mother of invention.
Devil’s Food Cake: The Sinfully Rich Chocolate Masterpiece
Devil’s food cake is a rich chocolate layer cake that emerged in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. It is characterized by its dark color, high chocolate or cocoa content, and moist texture. This wasn’t your average chocolate cake – this was Grandma’s way of showing off her baking prowess.
Devil’s food cake is an even more recent creation, dating back just over 120 years ago. That’s when the first known recipe for the moist, rich dessert is believed to have been published, in the hugely influential “Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book: A Manual of Housekeeping,” which is still in print today.
As decadently dark, sinful, and tempting as its name implies, devil’s food cake was invented in the early 1900s as an antipode to the already famed angel food cake. The contrast between good and evil, light and dark – it was marketing genius wrapped in chocolate frosting.
In 1919, the Taggart Baking Company began selling the first commercially produced cupcakes, made using a devil’s food cake recipe. The cupcakes would be marketed under the Hostess brand after 1925, and later evolved into the Hostess CupCake known today. Talk about leaving a legacy!
Shoofly Pie: The Pennsylvania Dutch Wonder
Shoofly pie is a type of American pie made with molasses associated with Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine. While shoo-fly pie has been a staple of Moravian, Mennonite, and Amish foodways, there is scant evidence concerning its origins, and most of the folktales concerning the pie are apocryphal, including the persistent legend that the name comes from flies being attracted to the sweet filling.
This humble dessert tells the story of resourcefulness. Shoofly pie originated among the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1880s as a crumb cake. Eventually, homemakers added a crust to make it easier to eat along with coffee in the mornings. Because it has no eggs, historians believe that it was generally baked during the winter, when eggs were less available. Made thick with molasses and brown sugar, it’s certainly easy to believe this was a winter comfort food.
Traditionally it was not served as a dessert pie, but instead as a breakfast food with hot coffee. Imagine starting your day with pie – those were simpler times indeed. The name shoo-fly was borrowed from a brand of molasses that was popular in parts of the U.S. during the late 19th century.
Pound Cake: The Simple Elegance of Butter and Sugar
Pound cake is one of the most classic, simple cakes there is, and everyone needs a recipe for one in their baking repertoire. This pound cake is buttery and unfussy, but never boring, perfect for serving as an impressive dessert or decadent brunch. Grandma’s pound cake was the Swiss Army knife of desserts – versatile, reliable, and always delicious.
The original recipe called for a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. That’s where the name came from, and it made enough cake to feed an army. In fact, pound cake is Southern Living magazine’s most requested recipe. Some traditions never go out of style.
What made Grandma’s pound cake special was the technique. Room temperature ingredients, proper creaming, and the patience to beat the batter until it was perfectly smooth. Modern baking experts still swear by these time-tested methods that create that signature dense, buttery crumb.
Childhood favorites such as chicken pot pie, buttery pound cake and gingersnap cookies are also trending. Everything old becomes new again, especially when it tastes this good.
Bananas Foster: New Orleans’ Flamboyant Gift to America
The original Bananas Foster, an absolutely delightful and classic dessert, traces its origins to the early 1950s in New Orleans. The dish was created by Chef Paul Blangé at Brennan’s restaurant and named after Richard Foster, a regular customer and friend of the restaurant’s owner, Owen Brennan.
This wasn’t just dessert – it was dinner theater. The indulgent treat typically features ripe bananas cooked in a rich caramel sauce made with brown sugar, butter, banana liqueur, and dark rum. The sauce is often ignited tableside, adding a dramatic flair to the dining experience. Once the flames subside, the bananas are served over vanilla ice cream, creating a delightful combination of warm, gooey sweetness and cold creaminess.
Owen Brennan, of famed Bourbon St. restaurant Brennan’s, asked his sister to prepare a special dessert in honor of Richard Foster, who at the time was chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission. Frustrated, she grabbed what she could find, and since her father ran a produce business, what she could find was bananas. Sometimes the best recipes come from desperation and creativity.
Another flamboyant dessert, boozy Bananas Foster was invented in the early ’50s at Brennan’s restaurant in jazzy New Orleans. It was an applaud-worthy dessert made with bananas, vanilla ice cream, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon and dazzled with dark rum and banana liqueur and then set aglow.
Boston Cream Pie: Massachusetts’ Sweet Contradiction
One of the first questions about Boston crème pie is “Why is it called a pie when it’s a cake?” The answer is simply that cakes and pies were once baked in the same pan and the words were used interchangeably. A golden cake filled with custard and topped with a rich chocolate glaze, this dessert was first created in 1856 at the Parker House Hotel. Formerly referred to as the “Parker House Chocolate Cream Pie”, Boston cream pie is now the official dessert of Massachusetts.
There’s an unwavering appeal to the Boston Cream Pie’s two layers of golden sponge cake sandwiching thick custard, all topped with a glossy layer of chocolate. Grandma’s version required mastering three separate techniques – sponge cake, pastry cream, and chocolate glaze. It was the dessert equivalent of a triple axel.
While the recipe itself isn’t particularly groundbreaking – vanilla sponge sandwiching vanilla pastry cream – topping it with a chocolate frosting was nothing short of revolutionary. It’s that historical twist that makes this decadent dish distinctly American, and worthy of being crowned Massachusetts’ state dessert.
The Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston gets bragging rights as the place where the Boston cream pie was invented in the mid-1800s, although there are rumblings that it debuted elsewhere. It’s a yellow butter cake or sponge cake (and it’s not a pie at all) with a rich custard and a thick chocolate glaze. It was extremely popular in New England, and while you can still find it if you look, especially at tourist spots, it is nowhere as popular as back in the day, when Boston Brahmins baked it religiously.
Baked Alaska: The Scientific Wonder of the Dessert World
Baked Alaska’s history starts with a scientific discovery. In the 1900s, Sir Benjamin Thompson, inventor of the kitchen range, discovered that meringue was an excellent insulator. This dessert was pure showmanship – ice cream that survived the oven thanks to the magical properties of egg whites.
The first to bring Alaska into the picture was Delmonico’s chef Charles Ranhofer, who came up with Alaska Florida, a walnut cake with banana ice cream and meringue. He named it after the then recent acquisition of Alaska by the US, and because of the contrast between the cold ice cream and the toasted meringue.
Here at Delish, baked Alaska has never gone out of style, and we’re committed to bringing this classic nostalgic dessert back. Basically a glorified ice cream cake, this towering dessert will be the talk of any dinner party you serve it at (especially when you cut into it for the very first time – be prepared for ooh’s and aah’s).
A dessert that would melt hearts and impress a mother-in-law or birthday celebrant, Baked Alaska used to show up on restaurant menus as a special shared dessert but not so much anymore – except for old-school restaurants like Delmonico’s in NYC, which is said to have invented the dish to celebrate the US acquisition of Alaska in 1867. Baked Alaska is created with ice cream and cake and topped with meringue. Kirsch or liqueur is added, and the dessert is set ablaze.
Chocolate Chip Cookies: America’s Accidental Masterpiece
The chocolate chip cookie might be America’s greatest accidental invention. Ruth Wakefield’s happy mistake at the Toll House Inn in 1938 created a dessert that would become synonymous with American childhood. Brownies are the most popular in the UK, whereas chocolate chip cookies are in the USA.
We’ve found that rolling these cookies into bigger portions, then refrigerating them for at least 2 hours before slightly under-baking them at 350°, results in incredibly gooey, soft chocolate chip cookies. The secret was in the technique – something every grandmother discovered through trial and error.
If you’re making peanut butter cookies, you should really go with the recipe from the peanut butter masters, right? Like the Hershey’s chocolate cake, this Jif recipe has been tried and tested a million times, ensuring they’re the best out there. Between the all brown sugar cookie making this a deeper, chewier, and more caramel-flavored, every bite is bursting with peanut butter flavor.
Modern baking experts still debate the perfect ratio of brown to white sugar, the ideal chilling time, and whether to slightly underbake for that perfect chewy center. We’ve found that rolling these cookies into bigger portions, then refrigerating them for at least 2 hours before slightly under-baking them at 350°, results in incredibly gooey, soft chocolate chip cookies.
