Can you match the signature dessert to its state?

• Georgia
• Arkansas
• New Mexico
• North Dakota

Patience is a virtue when it comes to the Arkansas black apple pie. This dark variety of apples is not meant to be enjoyed straight off the tree but rather kept in cold storage for up to a couple of months while it ages, becoming even darker, richer in flavor, and softer. Its naturally firm texture and tartness make it a less-than-ideal candidate for taking a bite out of, but that's exactly what makes it prime for baked pies.

Southern Living calls Arkansas black apple pie one of the "lost pies of the South," as it's rare to find it in other states. While variations exist that allow for preparing these special apples in other confections, such as a cobbler, crisp, or tart, the approach to making Arkansas black apple pie is similar to the classic American apple pie—apples, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg—with the same type of flaky crust.

• Oregon
• Wyoming
• Louisiana
• Illinois

Although most closely associated with the city of New Orleans—particularly the restaurant Cafe du Monde—beignets are so widely beloved that they're Louisiana's state donut. These square, fried fritters are dusted in powdered sugar and sometimes filled with fruit. But modern twists on the recipe sometimes incorporate other sweet ingredients like Nutella hazelnut spread or Oreos, or even savory seafood like crab and crawfish. Known as the "French donut," beignets were brought to Louisiana by Acadians, French settlers who migrated from Canada and would eventually become known as the Cajuns.

• California
• West Virginia
• New Mexico
• Nevada

The first U.S. state to designate an official state cookie was New Mexico, which bestowed the honor upon the biscochito, also known as bizcochito, in 1989. Imported by Spanish colonists, these "little biscuits" are crisp butter cookies, generally flavored with a touch of anise and cinnamon, that are most popular around the December holidays. Celina's Biscochito in Albuquerque, New Mexico, offers cookies in nontraditional flavors, such as green and red chile, pecan, cocoa chocolate chip, and lemon. The Santa Fe Biscochito Company in Santa Fe serves biscochito ice cream.

• Hawai'i
• Massachusetts
• Vermont
• Rhode Island

The Bay State owes its official dessert to the capital city of Boston, which gave birth to the iconic custard cake in 1856. It was the brainchild of French Armenian chef M. Sanzian at the Parker House hotel—although some argue that Chef Sanzian simply tweaked the recipe for an existing dessert, then known as Washington pie. A layer cake with filling may not have been a new idea at the time, but this "pie" might have marked the debut of Boston cream, a riff on France's crème pâtissière that has become an alternative filling for donuts and puff pastries like éclairs.

• Ohio
• Montana
• South Dakota
• Virginia

Ohio is known as the Buckeye State, so named for its state tree, whose nuts are said to resemble the eye of a male deer, also known as a buck. And its signature dessert? A peanut butter ball dipped in chocolate made to resemble the buckeye nut. You can try it by making a few stops along the Ohio Buckeye Candy Trail, which features 37 locations throughout the state. Alternatively, you can make a batch yourself from pantry staples.

• Connecticut
• New York
• Nebraska
• New Jersey

One of the most classic ice cream parlor flavors is butter brickle, which reportedly originated in the 1920s at the Blackstone Hotel's Orleans Room in Omaha, Nebraska. This candy-flecked confection includes toffee—not butterscotch, as the name suggests—enveloped in vanilla ice cream. When chocolate sauce is drizzled on top, it's said to taste much like a Heath Bar. Variations include swapping vanilla for maple and butterscotch-flavored ice cream—or even salted caramel, which is how Omaha's Coneflower Creamery pays homage to the nostalgic scoop.

• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Wyoming
• Kansas

Fittingly, the signature dessert of the Cowboy State is the "cowboy cookie," a mixture of coconut, pecans, chocolate chips, and oatmeal or rolled oats, according to most recipes. These chunky cookies are the perfect snack for long stretches out on a cattle drive, as they provide plenty of dense nutrients and energy for cowboys on the go. While The Vancouver Sun calls them "the original power bar," the addition of chocolate chips makes cowboy cookies a delectable treat rather than just a "good-for-you" health food.

• Hawai'i
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Delaware

It may sound like a mere beverage, but Del's lemonade is indeed considered a dessert thanks to its frozen texture. Imagine adding fresh lemon juice and sugar to a pile of snow; that's essentially how this sweet treat was invented in 1840 by the DeLucia patriarch in Naples, Italy. His descendants opened the first stateside lemonade stand in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1948. Now a franchise business, Del's has been serving up "happiness in a cup" since its inception. Contemporary flavor variations include blueberry, watermelon, peach mango, blood orange, and cherry.

• Georgia
• Kentucky
• Iowa
• Connecticut

The Bluegrass State's signature dessert is undoubtedly derby pie, a chocolate-nut pie created in 1954 by the Kern family at the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky. Trademarked in 1969, the walnut and chocolate pie has found a home base at Kern's Kitchen in Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby. It's a fitting coincidence given the name for the pie was initially pulled out of a hat!

In 1985, Kern's served derby pie at the Kentucky Derby Museum's grand reopening, beginning an official partnership with the Kentucky Derby Festival in 1990. While the derby pie has its imitators, the original recipe is a secret.

• South Dakota
• Delaware
• Tennessee
• North Carolina

Never was a name for a confection as appropriate as Goo Goo Clusters—a jumble of chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and marshmallow nougat created in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1912. This beloved regional candy has even inspired an espresso drink at the Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, which also sells the original version of the clusters in its stores nationwide. Additional flavors available include pecan and peanut butter.

• Indiana
• Wisconsin
• Colorado
• Missouri

Gooey butter cake first emerged from St. Louis as a breakfast pastry akin to a coffee cake. But its sweetness and gooeyness have established the confection as a bona fide dessert in Missouri. While brown sugar can be substituted for white sugar, and evaporated milk can be used in place of water, the key to this recipe is simply adding a lot of butter or shortening—the gloppier and yellower, the better! Non-Missourians can get a taste of the local specialty by trying the gooey butter cake flavor from Jeni's Ice Creams, available in scoop shops and grocery freezer aisles nationwide.

• Hawai'i
• Colorado
• Arizona
• Nevada

In Hawai'i, a coconut milk-based pudding called haupia is both a signature dessert in its own right and a topping for other desserts, such as chocolate pie. There's even a fried version that's available at Hawaiian McDonald's. Thanks to the addition of thickening agents like arrowroot starch, also known as "pia," this dessert has a gelatinous texture that allows it to be sliced and passed around as a handheld snack at luaus and other celebrations.

• South Carolina
• Florida
• Colorado
• Indiana

You can thank the Florida Keys for cultivating Southeast Asian key limes and introducing them into the lexicon of American cuisine. Key lime pie was the official dessert of the Sunshine State until July 2022, when strawberry shortcake assumed the throne. But don't worry, key lime pie remains the state pie.

The recipe involves baking a mixture of key lime juice, eggs, and sweetened condensed milk in a graham cracker crust. You'd be hard-pressed to find any other kind of lime pie in the continental U.S.; the smaller key limes offer a distinct flavor and aroma that makes them a sought-after culinary ingredient among bakers.

• Missouri
• Alabama
• Texas
• Wisconsin

Kringles are a "Wisconsin thing," an official pastry that is nearly exclusive to the state. This ring-shaped, flaky confection originates in Racine, Wisconsin, where most of the state's Danish immigrants settled and opened businesses, including bakeries. Although the kringle has lost its original pretzel shape since arriving in the U.S., its old-world flair is preserved in the three-day effort required to create all 32 layers of puff pastry the traditional Danish way.

Today, there are nut kringles and fruit kringles, both of which are popular at breakfast with a cup of coffee. But part of this dessert's Americanization also involves filling it with whatever your heart desires, including favorites like chocolate and caramel.

• Illinois
• Mississippi
• North Dakota
• Delaware

Originally imported to North Dakota by Norwegian immigrants, contrary to its name, krumkake is technically a cookie. Loosely translated as "curved cake," krumkake involves rolling up wafer-thin dough made from flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and cream, into a cannoli shell. With a crisp texture, it's a cross between a crepe and a waffle cone. Surprisingly, most people eat it empty, without ice cream or any other kind of filling.

• South Dakota
• Delaware
• Texas
• Iowa

The popularity of kuchen—the German word for "cake"—can be directly traced to the ancestry of over a third of the state's residents, who immigrated to South Dakota in large numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. No visit to this Great Plains state would be complete without partaking in "dough pie," which was acknowledged as the state dessert in 2000. The tasty treat is especially abundant in the eastern part of the state. It can be found at Pietz's Kuchen Kitchen & Specialties, which offers a variety of fruits, including peaches, blueberries, apples, cherries, and more.

• Tennessee
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• Vermont

In the summer, soft-serve ice cream isn't hard to find at roadside stands throughout New England. But it's only in Vermont that you'll find maple creemee, a confection made from lower-fat cream, condensed milk, sugar, and real maple syrup. That last ingredient is key to this dessert's uniqueness and local appeal, as Vermont is the long-time leading producer of maple syrup in the U.S. You shouldn't have a hard time finding it at one of the state's many farms, maple syrup–producing sugarhouses, and creemee stands. Some establishments have special "creemee hours" as well as unusual takes that think "outside the cone" with alternatives like creemee cookie sandwiches and toppings like maple sprinkles.

• Oregon
• Illinois
• Georgia
• New York

When state legislatures selected the marionberry pie as Oregon's official pie in 2017, they resolved that these delicious baked goods were both "mouthwatering and delightful when served by themselves, à la mode or garnished with whipped cream" as well as "an ideal way to celebrate the wonders of a Pacific Northwest summer."

Named after Oregon's Marion County and introduced in 1956, marionberries were created at Oregon State University by cross-breeding two types of blackberries. These "Marion blackberries" look just like regular blackberries—although they're sweeter and more tart. As for marionberry pie, it has remained a uniquely regional cuisine thanks to the berries' delicate nature: They're only grown in Oregon, and they're too soft to ship. Or, as Food and Wine magazine suggests, perhaps Oregonians simply clamor to keep them all to themselves, and there's none left for export.

• Maryland
• Wyoming
• Mississippi
• Utah

As unappetizing as it might sound, Mississippi Mud Pie is known both for its sludgy appearance and its fudgy deliciousness. Although they're generally made with pudding mix, Cool Whip, and a graham cracker or chocolate crust, as The New York Times puts it, no two mud pies are alike.

Mud pie can be served with ice cream and is often topped with chocolate sauce. The only real rule is to make it gooey. Fittingly, mud pie's exact origins are a bit murky—with urban legends dating back as far as the 1920s and as recently as the 1970s. However, there's no question that this dessert is a true icon of Mississippi.

• Maine
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Minnesota

Overtaking Delaware as the Peach State, Georgia's peaches are a bumper crop for the state's agricultural endeavors and the source of its official dessert: peach cobbler. An entirely different dessert from pie, cobbler often lacks a bottom crust and features a less refined, more rough-hewn, crumbly, or cakey topping. This "cobbled together" confection would have been more accessible for colonial Europeans who lacked the cookware for more structured bakes. To be sure, you'll need a spoon instead of a pie server to get your portion onto your plate.

• Idaho
• New York
• New Jersey
• Utah

We have the Jersey Shore's Atlantic City to thank for saltwater taffy, a seaside treat invented in the late 1880s. The origins have become something of a legend, often involving a flooded candy shop where the seawater-soaked taffy was sold to the delight of local beachgoers. In reality, saltwater taffy doesn't actually contain any saltwater from the Atlantic, although it does have some salt. Once merely a seaside treat, saltwater taffy is now sold everywhere from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Disneyland's California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, California—at the Pixar Pier, of course.

• New York
• Maryland
• Pennsylvania
• Connecticut

The official dessert of the Keystone State is the curiously named shoofly pie, introduced in the late 1800s by German immigrants now known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Sometimes presented as a firm, hand-held cake baked in a pie crust, there is also an undercooked, gooey version with a "wet bottom" that requires a fork and a plate to eat. Shoofly pie gets its main flavor from molasses—making every bite of this pie deliciously rich and comforting.

• Delaware
• Maryland
• Utah
• Wyoming

The colors of black and gold are deeply rooted in Maryland's history and culture. They prominently feature on the state flag, and they're also the team colors of the University of Maryland's Terrapins. It stands to reason, then, that the state dessert would reflect the same color palette.

Originating from Maryland's Smith Island, this cake consists of as many as 10 layers of yellow cake with chocolate icing in between. The recipe for Smith Island cake has been passed down through generations, thanks in part to "Mrs. Kitching's Smith Island Cookbook" by Frances Kitching, who helped feed the watermen who worked the island in the 1950s. Today, the place to get the most authentic version of this multilayered cake is Smith Island Bakery.

• New Hampshire
• Nevada
• Indiana
• Texas

The official state pie of Indiana is the sugar cream pie, also known as Hoosier Pie, after the Hoosier State—a nickname that dates back to 1833. The sweet treat's humble origins may trace back to the Amish or Shakers as a kind of "desperation pie," a dessert arising from a lack of access to ingredients. A penny-pinching household might have baking basics like sugar, whipping cream or milk, flour, and butter to put into a pie crust. And in more prosperous times, flavorings like nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla could be added. You don't even need eggs to make this recipe. If you'd rather not do the work yourself, the most famous purveyor of sugar cream pie is Wick's Pies and Mrs. Wick's Pies and Restaurant in Winchester, Indiana.

• Michigan
• Maine
• Washington
• Alaska

Thanks to a commercial endeavor that began in 1893, the state of Michigan—particularly Traverse City—is one of America's leading producers of tart cherries. As a result, the state has a unique take on the traditional cherry pie. As the name suggests, tart cherries have a flavor profile that's more likely to make you pucker than traditional sweet cherries. Thankfully, they're known for being particularly ideal for use in baked goods.

In Michigan, cherry pies are often made with Montmorency cherries, which originate in France's Montmorency Valley. You can learn all about the fruit and its local growers at Traverse City's National Cherry Festival. Make sure to try some slices of Grand Traverse Pie Company's cherry crumb pie!

1-6: You doughnut know much about dessert. It seems you haven't sampled many states' desserts. Time to go on a taste-testing journey!

7-12: Not much of a sweet tooth. You did pretty well, but it's clear you're skipping dessert more often than not.

13-19: Major brownie points. Your dessert knowledge extends well beyond ice cream and cookies. Well done!

20-25: Sugar Superstar. You're the crème de la crème when it comes to dessert! There's nothing (or very little) you haven't tried.

Note: This content was created with the assistance of AI tools and has been thoroughly reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by Stacker's editorial team to ensure accuracy, reliability, and alignment with our editorial standards.

Story editing by Jaimie Etkin. Copy editing by Meg Shields. Adapted from a Stacker article originally written by Sandi Hemmerlein.