Buckeye, Biscochito, and Marion Berry Pie. All over the United States, locals are creating sweet treats that travelers must try.
Some of them are delicious enough to be worth fighting over.
Here are 15 of the best local desserts from all over the United States. What joys were we missing out on? Share your favorites in the comments section below.
Whoopie Pies, New England and Pennsylvania
The origins of delicious creations are often controversial, and whoopie pies are no exception.
Pennsylvania and Maine are just two places that claim the cream-filled chocolate cake-like cookie sandwich. Pennsylvania says it was invented by Amish cooks, while Maine says it was first sold at Labadie’s Bakery in Lewiston in the 1920s.
Maine went a step further and made the whoopie pie the state’s official “snack” in 2011 (not to be confused with the state’s dessert, blueberry pie).
Alabama also has the state’s dessert, the lane cake. The star of this layer cake is the filling. A mixture of raisins with butter, bourbon, or brandy, and sometimes pecans or coconut.
Emma Rylander Lane of Clayton, Alabama, is credited with the invention and namesake of this cake, whose recipe was published in her 1898 cookbook, Some Good Things to Eat. This Southern sweet also appears in the pages of Harper Lee’s A Tale of Alabama.
Marionberry, named after Marion County, Oregon, is a hybrid of Chehalem blackberry and Ollery blackberry. According to the Oregon Raspberry & Blackberry Commission, this berry was introduced in 1956. The commission said marionberries have a “tart, earthy sweetness” and are “perfect for eating raw.”
It’s also great for pies, and in July bakeries are filled with berries baked into a rich, buttery crust. Portland’s Lauretta Jean’s Pie Bakery is making the most of the short but sweet marionberry season.
The origins of the iconic Key lime pie have been called into question in recent years, and Floridians aren’t happy about it. But this pie definitely has strong ties to the Sunshine State, and it’s the official state pie. (The designation of strawberry shortcake as the state’s official dessert in 2022 came as a surprise to some Key lime pie lovers.)
Small, tart, yellowish Key limes were once grown commercially in the Florida Keys, and pie is a Key West specialty. According to Britannica’s online entry on pies, imported limes and bottled juices seem to be used in many pies these days. It’s usually a graham cracker crust filled with tart custard made with plenty of fruit juice and sweetened condensed milk.
St. Louis’ gooey butter cake is thought to have originated as the result of a lucky accident in the 1930s.
Although it’s not Missouri’s state dessert (it’s an ice cream cone associated with the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair), the rich, flat cake with a gooey center is sold throughout St. Louis in its classic form or with twists like lemon and butter-pecan flavors. It is often sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Shave ice came to Hawaii from Japan via sugar plantation workers, where shaved ice has been a popular sweet dessert for centuries. Soft ice flakes carved from a solid block absorb your favorite sweet syrup.
Matsumoto Shave Ice was founded on Oahu’s North Shore in 1951 and has been providing refreshing treats to locals and visitors for generations. Lilikoi (passion fruit) and mango pickles are on the tropical end of the flavor spectrum, which also includes grape and bubblegum. Add-ons such as condensed milk, vanilla ice cream, and azuki beans are available.
A legal battle is brewing over Kentucky’s delicious chocolate walnut pie. According to Kearns Kitchen in Louisville, there is only one such pie, first created in the 1950s, and the bakery has a registered trademark under the name Derby Pie®.
Businesses are very serious about it.
Kearns Kitchen has taken numerous legal actions to protect its trademarks. But in 2021, the Louisville Courier-Journal won a trademark battle over the use of the term “Derby Pie” in recipes and newspaper articles. A pie worth fighting over? Please taste it and see.
Moravian Sugar Cake, North Carolina, Pennsylvania
This coffee cake is great for a holiday brunch or as a sweet coffee accompaniment any time of the day. This cake’s roots date back hundreds of years to Moravian Church settlements in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
In North Carolina, Dewy’s Bakery in Winston-Salem has been baking buttery cakes since 1930. Winston-Salem is touted as the home of the incredibly thin Moravian cookie, a crunchy molasses treat spiced in its most traditional form.
Peanut butter and chocolate that requires no baking. What’s not to love? This candy originates from the Buckeye State and gets its nickname from the tree whose berries resemble a deer’s eye.
The story goes that the bite-sized peanut butter balls covered in a layer of dark chocolate on all but the top were created in the 1960s by Ohio resident Gail Taber.
They were shared at the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game, and their simple goodness eventually spread beyond the state.
“A pie with a cake crust,” Yankee Magazine described Boston Cream Pie, with sweet pastry cream sandwiched between two golden cakes and finished with a smooth chocolate glaze.
This pie scam seems to have its roots in Boston’s Parker House Hotel (now the Omni Parker House), which opened in 1855. Boston cream pie is the state dessert of Massachusetts. (State donuts? Yes, Boston Cream.) Why it’s called a pie is still very much a mystery.
Made with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, rum and banana liqueur, this banana dish is cooked tableside and served over vanilla ice cream. It was invented at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans. According to the Times-Picayune, it was for a 1951 dinner honoring Richard Foster, chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission.
Brennan’s offers it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it’s the most ordered item on the menu. Here is the recipe. Beginners to flambé should proceed with caution.
smith island cake, maryland
This cake, which has up to 10 thin yellow cake layers separated by fudge frosting, is believed to have originated on Smith Island in Maryland. Its designation as Maryland’s official state dessert in 2008 brought national attention to the cake and its birthplace, a 3-by-5-mile island in the Chesapeake Bay where almost everything arrives by boat.
Currently, two baking companies, Smith Island Bakery and Smith Island Baking Company, ship cakes in a variety of flavors across the country.
The exact origins of coconut cake are difficult to pin down, but the decadent layer cake covered in shaved coconut has been associated with the South since the 1800s. Baker and author Anne Byrne told NPR that enslaved African cooks had knowledge of new ingredients, such as coconut, and created some of the best cakes in the South.
Here are some cherished family recipes from Cheryl Day, who ran Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia for 22 years before closing in 2024.
This anise-flavored cookie topped with cinnamon sugar was brought to New Mexico by early Spanish settlers. Biscochitos have been the state’s official cookie since 1989, and New Mexico claims to be the first state to receive such a designation. It is often made using lard, and the dough is rolled out thinly and shaped. Cookies are a Christmas tradition and often appear at weddings and other celebrations.
Several years ago, Texas Monthly said it received “a ton of letters” about how best to make this thin chocolate cake, which is often served at funerals and church events.
How it came to be associated with the state remains a mystery, but its size has been put forward as one possible reason. It is often baked in a jelly roll pan, which allows the cake to rise. Cocoa is a prominent ingredient in both the cake and the frosting, with the latter mixed with nuts.
This previously published story has been updated in 2025.
