And for Dessert?

As I've mentioned before in this space, we are really looking forward to this weekend's annual Chili Shootout, Saturday at Aviators Stadium. Lots and lots of outstanding chili, along with other delicious foods, beverages, great music, and a Wiffle Ball tournament.

Maybe some day in the future, we can open up the Chili Shootout to include dessert, too. I always look for something sweet after indulging in all the great salty and savory fare available at the Shootout.

But, what to serve?

Business Insider has a piece up at their site that takes a look at The Unofficial Dessert of Every State. Only eight U.S. states have official desserts, so these are only suggestions by the author of the piece, L.V. Anderson.

Rather than covering the entire country and all 50 states, let's just take a look at the Midwest:

Illinois:
Brownies made their debut at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, so I thought it was only fair to credit Chicago for one of the world’s favorite baked goods. After all, the original recipe, which contains a pound of chocolate and a pound of butter, is a good one.

Wisconsin:
Kringle
What is a kringle, you ask? Why, just head over to kringle.com, which tells you everything you need to know: The home page bears several photographs of the ring-shaped, fruit-filled, streudel-like pastries and a large insignia reading “Official State Pastry of Wisconsin.” Wisconsinites know that the best kringles are found in Racine County, whose Danish immigrants have made it “America’s Kringle Capital.”

Iowa:
Cherry pie
As a famous gourmand once said, “tastes so good, makes a grown man cry.” Every year at the annual fundraiser known as Veishea, Iowa State students sell thousands of cherry pies to raise money for the Veishea Cherry Pie Scholarship Fund. This bake sale tradition has been going on since 1920.

Indiana:
Sugar cream pie
According to the Indiana Foodways Alliance, “Indiana's contribution to the nation's pie mythology is sugar cream.” What is a sugar cream pie? The name is pretty literal: It’s a pie whose filling contains cream, flour, sugar, and vanilla—no eggs. It’s also sometimes called Hoosier sugar cream pie, just in case any other state wanted for some reason to take credit for it.

Missouri:
Gooey butter cake
Gooey butter cake is a St. Louis curiosity that seems to defy description (despite the seemingly specific nature of its name). It falls somewhere between a sheet cake and a bar: It starts with a layer of thick, extra-buttery yellow cake (doctored from a cake mix box, usually), but the gooey part comes from a filling made of cream cheese, powdered sugar, and eggs. Like most great regional specialties, it comes with a host of contradictory origin stories, all of which place its birth somewhere in the 1930s or 1940s.

Kentucky:
Bread pudding
The home of bourbon deserves a bourbon-flavored state dessert, and the very best bourbon-flavored dessert is bread pudding with bourbon sauce. Granted, a bunch of Southern states (notably Louisiana) lay claim to bread pudding, but given that none of those states would be able to make decent bread pudding without bourbon, I’m giving this one to Kentucky.

Nebraska:
Popcorn balls
Nebraska is the country’s leading popcorn producer, growing about one-quarter of our national supply. According to legend, popcorn balls were invented during a day of wonky Nebraska weather: First heavy rains sent syrup flowing from sorghum grass into the cornfields, then extreme heat caused the corn to pop, and finally a tornado swept the sugar-coated popcorn into clusters. Climate change makes this story seem actually kind of plausible, but the folktale gives short shrift to whoever really invented candy-coated popcorn spheres, Nebraska’s homegrown contribution to the nation’s dessert menu.

Minnesota:
Seven-layer bars
Page 4 of "You Know You’re in Minnesota When …" states “a potluck isn’t a potluck without bars.” The best bars for a potluck or any other occasion are seven-layer bars, so called because they contain butter, graham cracker crumbs, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, walnuts, shredded coconut, and sweetened condensed milk, in that order.

The rest of the list can be found here.

And, to end on a classy note, let's watch awesome desserts whilst listening to Mozart, shall we?