Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to traditional English cuisine and Native American cuisine of the Abenaki, Narragansett, Niantic, Wabanaki, Wampanoag, and other native peoples. It also includes influences from Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine, among others. It is characterized by extensive use of potatoes, beans, dairy products and seafood, resulting from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry. Corn, the major crop historically grown by Native American tribes in New England, continues to be grown in all New England states, primarily as sweet corn although flint corn is grown as well. It is traditionally used in hasty puddings, cornbreads and corn chowders.
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, fruit preserves, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
An apple pie is a pie in which the principal filling is apples. Apple pie is often served with whipped cream, ice cream, custard or cheddar cheese. It is generally double-crusted, with pastry both above and below the filling; the upper crust may be solid or latticed. The bottom crust may be baked separately ("blind") to prevent it from getting soggy. Deep-dish apple pie often has a top crust only. Tarte Tatin is baked with the crust on top, but served with it on the bottom.
A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour that originated in the United States in the mid-19th century, with commercial development from about 1880. It is eaten as a snack food, usually honey- or cinnamon-flavored, and is used as an ingredient in some foods, e.g., in the graham cracker crust for cheesecakes and pies.
Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually refrigerated.
Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap.
Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location on the fertile Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea, giving rise to fishing, farming, and overseas trade. Due to the availability of water and flat grassland, the Dutch diet contains many dairy products such as butter and cheese. The court of the Burgundian Netherlands enriched the cuisine of the elite in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th century, so did in the 17th and 18th century colonial trade, when the Dutch ruled the spice trade, played a pivotal role in the global spread of coffee, and started the modern era of chocolate, by developing the Dutch process chocolate.
A butter tart is a type of small pastry tart highly regarded in Canadian cuisine. The sweet tart consists of a filling of butter, sugar, syrup, and egg, baked in a pastry shell until the filling is semi-solid with a crunchy top. The butter tart should not be confused with butter pie or with bread and butter pudding.
Cobbler is a dessert consisting of a fruit filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or dumpling before being baked. Some cobbler recipes, especially in the American South, resemble a thick-crusted, deep-dish pie with both a top and bottom crust. Cobbler is part of the cuisine of the United Kingdom and United States, and should not be confused with a crumble.
Chess pie is a dessert with a filling composed mainly of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and sometimes milk, characteristic of Southern United States cuisine.
Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine is the typical and traditional fare of the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Kuchen, the German word for cake, is used in other languages as the name for several different types of savory or sweet desserts, pastries, and gateaux. Most Kuchen have eggs, flour and sugar as common ingredients while also, but not always, including some fat. In the Germanosphere it is a common tradition to invite friends over to one's house or to a cafe between noon and evening to drink coffee and eat Kuchen.
Christmas cookies or Christmas biscuits are traditionally sugar cookies or biscuits cut into various shapes related to Christmas.
Parkin is a gingerbread cake traditionally made with oatmeal and black treacle, which originated in Northern England. Often associated with Yorkshire, it is widespread and popular elsewhere, notably in Lancashire. Parkin is baked to a hard cake but with resting becomes moist and even sometimes sticky. There are regional differences; for example, in Hull and East Yorkshire, it has a drier, more biscuit-like texture than in other areas, whereas in Lancashire it is generally made with golden syrup rather than with the treacle used elsewhere. Parkin is traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night, 5 November, and when celebrating "Yorkshire Day" on 1 August, and it is also enjoyed throughout the winter months. It is baked commercially throughout Yorkshire but is mainly a domestic product in other areas.
Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy" is a popular song about Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, with music by Guy Wood and words by Sammy Gallop. It was published in 1945.
Pie in American cuisine has roots in English cuisine and has evolved over centuries to adapt to American cultural tastes and ingredients. The creation of flaky pie crust shortened with lard is credited to American innovation.
As American as Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fakelore of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine is a 2013 nonfiction book by William Woys Weaver, published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
