The cheesecake is the most loved American cake of all time, prepared in two versions: either raw, in which the spreadable cream cheese is hardened in the refrigerator, or cooked, with the addition of beaten eggs and then baked. The New York cheesecake has as its peculiarity the use of sour cream and milk, but the most widespread version in the United States includes the famous spreadable cream cheese widely used in pastry making. Another big difference is made by the base, made up of a compact layer of crumbled biscuits bound with melted butter. The biscuits used in the original recipe are graham crackers, biscuits with a unique flavor made from white flour, honey and wheat germ that you can easily buy at any supermarket. Many, as a valid replacement, use dry digestive biscuits or any thin biscuits.
If the cheesecake represents the traditional cake, modernity is made up of red velvet, which has experienced an explosion of popularity in recent years: today there are red velvet in the form of cupcakes, pancakes, biscuits, ice cream flavors and much more. Not much is known about its birth, but it seems that it already existed in the nineteenth century and that it was called so because of the use of chocolate in the dough, which gave the cake a smoother consistency, similar to the velvet to which it owes its name . When cake ingredients (specifically sugar and butter) were rationed during World War II, some bakers began adding other ingredients, including beet juice, which made the cakes more pleasing to the eye. Although this habit had spread (to the point that some claim that red velvet was born in the southern states during the Second World War), the paternity of this dessert is disputed between the Adams extraction company, which takes credit for making “the original red velvet” in the 1920s and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, which helped popularize the recipe in the 1950s.
Delicious and perfect for a snack, brownies are among the most loved snacks by Americans, probably born at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to Fannie Farmer, a well-known American cookbook author who adapted her chocolate cookie recipe by transforming it into bars, to be baked in oven into a single dough and then cut. It is not difficult to understand the origin of the name which, simply, refers to the dark color of the dessert; then there is the clear, more recent version, the blondies, without cocoa or chocolate and usually vanilla scented.
Colorful and inviting are the cupcakes: the perfect sweets for those who want to indulge in a break from the rule without exaggerating with quantities. In fact, they are small cakes covered with icing or creams of various kinds, usually with butter or spreadable cheese, often covered with sprinkles.
Perhaps the word cupcakes was chosen because of the unit of measurement used in American pastry making, the cup, and the cupcakes were created as a more practical alternative to serve to guests during an afternoon tea or a meeting. Many pastry shops also make the mini version for a little indulgence on the go.
not only apple pie … apple cobbler!
