Essential Southern Desserts

[Jaymes]

Lots of recipes with pecans....not only pie, but Pecan Rolls and Pecan Tassies.

[Jaymes]

Another vote for peach cobbler as an essentially Southern dessert. How can anyone say it's not? Growing up in Tennessee, we used to have it for dessert at least once a week in summer. I have since lived in three cities north along the east coast and have hardly ever seen peach cobbler unless I made it myself. I crave it. So I make it myself, just to have a taste of my Southern childhood. It's Southern, I tell ya!

Seems pretty obvious to me that peach cobbler is "from" the places where the peaches grow.

Right, y'all?

[Varmint]

Pig pickin' cake. Nuff said.

[rickmcdaniel]

I guess I should have mentioned that "fruit cobbler" has instructions for all major cobbler fruits (apple, peach, blackberry, strawberry...)

Also, in regards to triffle and Scottish shortbread, the book covers foods that have become a part of our foodways in the South, even if they originated elsewhere. Look at Bill Neal's Southern Cooking and John Edgerton's Southern Food: at Home, on the Road, in History. Both of them minclude those foods because they have been here from the "get go."

Hummmingbird cake seems traditional, but the earliest recorded reference to it I have been able to find (and confirmed by the excellent foodtimeline.org) is from 1978; not exactly traditional.

Caramel cake and pecan tassies are now under serious consideration, as well.

Here is the revised list:

Cakes

Grandma Hill’s Plain Cake

Aunt Ruth’s Pound Cake

Grandma Hill’s Coconut Cake

Apple Stack Cake

Blackberry Jam Cake

Scripture Cake

Lane Cake

Lady Baltimore Cake

Red Velvet Cake

Caramel Cake

Pies, Cobblers and other fruit Desserts

Basic Pie Crust

Aunt Ruth's Sweet Potato Pie

Pecan Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Strawberry Shortcake

Peach Pie

Fruit Cobbler

Chess Pie

Black Bottom Pie

Buttermilk Pie

Jeff Davis Pie

Coconut Custard Pie

Baked Chocolate Pie

Key Lime Pie

Puddings, Fools And Trifles

Real Banana Pudding

Grandma Hill’s Sweet Potato Pudding

Fool

Trifle

Ambrosia

Bread Pudding

Candy, Cookies And Other Treats

Shortbread

Pralines

Bourbon Balls

Pecan Tassies

Divinity

What is Pig Pickin' Cake, Varmint?

[ruthcooks]

Another vote for peach cobbler as an essentially Southern dessert. How can anyone say it's not? Growing up in Tennessee, we used to have it for dessert at least once a week in summer. I have since lived in three cities north along the east coast and have hardly ever seen peach cobbler unless I made it myself. I crave it. So I make it myself, just to have a taste of my Southern childhood. It's Southern, I tell ya!

Seems pretty obvious to me that peach cobbler is "from" the places where the peaches grow.

Right, y'all?

←

Right on. Peaches grow in Illinois. We ate peach pie, peach cobbler and Mom canned dozens of quarts for winter use. I got sick to death of asking what's for dessert and being told, "There's always peaches."

Peaches are a Yankee food, y'all.

[Jaymes]

Another vote for peach cobbler as an essentially Southern dessert. How can anyone say it's not? Growing up in Tennessee, we used to have it for dessert at least once a week in summer. I have since lived in three cities north along the east coast and have hardly ever seen peach cobbler unless I made it myself. I crave it. So I make it myself, just to have a taste of my Southern childhood. It's Southern, I tell ya!

Seems pretty obvious to me that peach cobbler is "from" the places where the peaches grow.

Right, y'all?

Right on. Peaches grow in Illinois. We ate peach pie, peach cobbler and Mom canned dozens of quarts for winter use. I got sick to death of asking what's for dessert and being told, "There's always peaches."

Peaches are a Yankee food, y'all.

So I guess we all get to claim them. Guess peach cobbler is 'Merican.

[Timh]

Good one Rachel, I grew up on pineapple upside down cake.

Sweetfreak, OMG, you must be from LA, or AL. or MS. That is a true Southern delicacy. Good call.(the caramel cake) Did anyone mention Divinity? or Grasshopper Pie? My wife just made ricekrispy treats formy daughters so I'm alittle suger buzzed at the moment.

Edited July 28, 2005 by Timh (log)

[annieb]

Lest we forget, the southern part of Illinois is further south than Richmond, VA. Finding peaches growing near Chicago, you've got to go to the fruit belt in SW Michigan where the weather is considerably milder.

Peach cobbler shows up a lot in Chicago, primarily in soul food restaurants.

You don't have fruitcake on that list, and while it's become the brunt of many jokes, I think that's because most people haven't had a good homemade fruitcake from a Southern recipe. We're talking dark here, lots of molasses. I've got my great-grandma's from Alabama's recipe. First time I made it with my (not quite yet) husband and his brother to help me stir, they ate two hot out of the oven, and they had sworn up and down they didn't like fruitcake.

She also made a dessert called "Apple Do Funny" which I've never seen referred to in that way. Also no specific recipe has come down in the family. It's basically an apple crisp. I think she may have asked some of her Alabama neighbors when she moved there as a young bride who didn't know how to cook at all, having been orphaned and raised on the fly by friends and finally a rich older sister who had servants. She may have described it to some neighbor lady who helped her figure out how to make it but thought it was a funny way to do apples.

At least that's one explanation. The other is that the name came from Canada, where she spent her early childhood. For a bunch of Michiganders, my mom's family has a real weird combination of Canadianisms and southern foodways.