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| Ambrosia Coconut
A special-occasion salad, especially suitable for Thanksgiving dinner. This is popular throughout not only the South, but the Midwest as well, where it is also known as Millionaire Salad because of the luxurious nature of its ingredients.
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| Banana Pudding
There are, sad to say, many parts of America where pudding is a nearly-forgotten dessert. But in the South, where cooking tradition is more valued than cooking trends, pudding still remains a necessary sweet. Banana pudding is especially favored in the South, where it is always made with vanilla wafers and served either swirled with meringue or crowned with whipped topping, as in this Blue Willow recipe.
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| Blueberry Dessert
Although devised by the Hard Labor Creek Blueberry Farm of Social Circle, this layered sweet, known simply as blueberry dessert, will be a familiar kind of recipe to home cooks all around the country. You want to use the freshest, sweetest berries you can get (preferably just-picked); but you also must use Cool Whip. Don't even think of substituting whipped cream for the white stuff in a tub. The concordance of the cream cheese / Cool Whip layer with the nutty / sweet foundation and popping fresh berries on top is an only-in-America harmony. In some parts of the country, they'd call this dessert a torte.
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| Gingersnap Key Lime Pie
Many regional pies are known nationwide. One of the most distinctive is Key lime pie in South Florida, especially at Louie's Back Yard, an unbelievably romantic dining spot at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, where the smack of local citrus is cushioned in the traditional way with the gentleness of egg-enriched sweetened condensed milk but then layered atop an unusually spicy gingersnap crust. This recipe was created by Louie's prodigious pastry chef, Niall Bowen. Key lime juice is generally available in specially food stores.
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| Hopkins House Apple Salad
The Hopkins House, famous for old-fashioned, eat-til-it-ouches boarding house meals, is no more. But during our last visit in 2003, we watched Margaret Pope and her son Mike cutting apples into chunks in the kitchen, then later sat down at the lunch table to discover the salad they were preparing. We love this concoction, not only for its brazen sugar content, but as culinary contraband – hail the Maraschino cherry! – and also because it exemplifies the candidly sweet (and canned-ingredient) salad found at so many southern buffet tables.
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| Jewish Apple Cake
One of the curious specialties that we’ve seen in a couple of places in Pennsylvania coal country, but nowhere else, is Jewish apple cake. It’s a dense coffee cake with a top that is laced with slivers of sweet, soft-cooked apple. A glorious coffee companion!
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| Orange Salad
Now run by a third generation of the family that started it in the 1930s, Carbone’s, of Hartford, Connecticut, is a deluxe restaurant, especially in the evening when the dining room is lit up by the pyrotechnics of tableside presentations of everything from steak Diane to bocce ball dessert. Perhaps the best loved dish in the house is Sicilian orange salad, so well-known to regular customers that it isn’t even listed on the menu!
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| Peach Cobbler
Whatever other desserts may be arrayed at the large circular table in the center of the Blue Willow Inn's buffet room, you can always count on a big pan of peach cobbler. Be sure to use self-rising flour in this recipe. (Note: Fresh peaches can be used as well as canned. When using fresh, peel and slice them, sprinkle the slices with an additional 1/2 cup of sugar and refrigerate for 2-3 hours before using.)
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| Stewed Apples
We had always liked desserts of apple pie, apple crisp, apple dumplings, and apple brown Betty, but didn't really know about having a side dish of stewed apples until we ate in the South. We have come to appreciate the luxury of tender, long-cooked apples as great companion for pig meat in of any kind – country ham, pork chops, even barbecue – and especially welcome as a syrup-sweet balance for bitter greens or tangy green tomatoes on an all-vegetable plate.
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| Sweet Italian Cheese Platter
For those with a serious sweet tooth who aren’t interested in frilly cakes and puddings, Harry Caray's of Chicago offers a platter of cheeses adorned with booze-infused fruits and sugar-toasted nuts.
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| Waldorf Salad
Hob Nob Hill in San Diego is one of the most polite, and most delicious coffee shops we know. With dinner, diners get a choice of salad: Waldorf, Caesar, spinach, etc. All come with a chilled fork! This recipe isn't actually Hob Nob Hill's, but it is the traditional way to make this kinda swanky salad, and Hob Nob Hill is all about tradition.
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