by Debbie Moose

Created on: January 07, 2010

Traditional Southern desserts reflect the history of the South. New arrivals to Southern states often comment on the sweetness of the desserts (and iced tea as well, but that’s another story). There’s a logical reason behind the Southern sweet tooth. As Jean Anderson points out in her book “A Love Affair with Southern Cooking” (William Morrow, 2007), sugar-laden desserts would be less likely to spoil at room temperature in the days before refrigeration. Also, sugarcane is grown in the Deep South, so it was a delightfully available ingredient.

 The South is a big place with many different traditions, and generalizing about it can be dangerous. But there are some traditionally popular desserts.

 Sweet potatoes are available all across the South – North Carolina is the nation’s top producer of sweet potatoes. In colonial times, pumpkin was less known. So, the traditional Thanksgiving dessert at Southern tables became sweet potato pie, and many cooks today don’t even both with that big, orange orb. 

A less-known dessert using sweet potatoes is popular in the North Carolina mountains. Sonker is similar to a deep-dish cobbler and is served with a sauce (called “dip”) of sugar and milk. Mt. Airy, N.C. holds a festival each fall dedicated to sonker. Fruit sonkers are popular at the event, but the traditional flavor is sweet potato. Festival organizers speculate that sweet potatoes would keep over the winter in days before refrigeration, so were available for making desserts when other ingredients were not.

In Louisiana, no Mardi Gras party would be complete without at least one King Cake. This coffeecake-like sweet dough bread is covered with icing and sugar in the Mardi Gras colors of green, purple and gold. A small toy baby, said to represent the baby Jesus, is baked into the dough, and the person who gets the piece with the baby is responsible for providing the next King Cake at the next party. And there’s always a next party during Mardi Gras.

Bread pudding, often liberally sauced with bourbon, is a New Orleans classic, where cooks use leftover French bread.

Chess Pie is also a Southern classic. The filling of lemon juice, sugar and eggs traces its line back to the lemon curd popular with English settlers. As for the name, there are numerous claims about where it came from: that it referred to the ventilated “chest” pies were kept in, or that it was a slurring of “it’s

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