This fresh strawberry pie, stacked high with just-picked farmers-market berries in a strawberry-juice glaze, comes with a great backstory. Liberace (pianist Vladziu Valentino Liberace)—once the world’s highest-paid entertainer, loved this pie, ordering it by the dozen from the place it was born: the now-defunct Hess Bros. Department store, of Allentown, PA. The man who sold it to him–Max Hess, Jr., was nearly as big a showman as Liberace himself. Continue Reading…
Since debuting in 1971 at Disney’s Polynesian Resort, Tonga Toast–a cinnamon-sugared chunk of flash-fried, banana-stuffed breakfast bliss–has always been a top seller. Michael Thompson, a Polynesian Resort chef for seven years, can’t give out exact sales numbers, but sums: “Let’s just say we receive our bananas by the pallet load!”
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Dough made with a high fat-to-flour ratio is called “short” and bakes up into the tender crumbly biscuits we call shortcake. Although my mom sometimes brought home store-bought cell-o packs of little yellow sponge cakes to serve as the base for strawberry shortcake desserts, those were never as good fresh, hot biscuits topped with strawberries in their hot-pink sugared juice, and plenty of fresh whipped cream.
First featured in a British cookbook in 1588, strawberry shortcake went on to become very popular in the United States, where by the 1850s it was served hot with both butter, cream, and of course: sweetened fresh strawberries. Continue Reading…