Abandonment Issues

Another subset of American desserts that Renato and I pursue with glee could be classified as Abandoned Desserts. Boston cream pie, Mississippi mud, all things grasshopper, and their equivalents are desserts that never quite endured like the mainstays of American baking: chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, and brownies. The reasons for their gradual decline are varied, though still explainable.

Desserts, like fashion, are highly influenced by cycles and trends. If you were afloat in a sea of lava cake (aka molten chocolate cake) during the nineties, you were not alone. The dessert was on every restaurant menu (regardless of cuisine and price point) throughout the decade. As of this writing, spiking desserts with bacon is de rigueur. These fashions are part of a natural cycle. Lava cake will slowly fade into misty, dew-covered nostalgia, and bacon-flavored chocolate will become a fleeting trend, like parachute pants. When Renato and I dig through our pile of neglected desserts, we like to focus on investigating those beauties that lived through a few heady trend cycles and then were unjustly tossed to the gutter, like grasshopper pie.