No, this is not Tish Boyle week here at CBTB. Well, maybe it is. Earlier this week I reviewed Flavorful by Tish, a magnificent dessert book from 2015. This book, Diner Desserts, dates from 2000 and is a very different beast, but a wondrous beast to be sure.
Flavorful deals with the maximum way to exploit favorite flavors such as vanilla and citrus and coffee. It’s the product of her creative force.
Diner Desserts is a piece of culinary history Tish’s documentation of classic diner desserts from that American wonder: the diner. Diners begin in 1872 in Providence, Rhode Island, when Walter Scott hitched horses to a wagon and sold sandwiches to factory workers. Fifteen years later in Massachusetts, Sam Jones made an improvement: inside space with seats. The rest is history, written in chrome and neon across the country.
You’ve been in diners and you’ve walked by the dessert station: a stack of cakes and pies, perhaps a circular glass enclosure hold those chilled delights like the lemon meringue pie that is higher than it is wide. It is those diner classics that Tish has sought out, refined for the home kitchen, and presented here in one chapter after another:
- Pie Heaven
- Under the Cake Keeper
- Say Cheesecake
- Cobblers, Crisps, and Other Fruit Favorites
- Proof of the Pudding
- Coffee Break — Cookies, Bars, and Brownies
- Dunkables — Doughnuts, Muffins and Pastries
- From the Soda Fountain
What delights has Tish captured? Oh, your favorites to be sure:
Sky-High Lemon Meringue Pie
Chocolate Cream Pie
German Chocolate Cake
Boston Cream Pie
Devil’s Food Cake with Fluffy White Frosting
Cherry Cheesecake
Chocolate Marble Cheesecake
Black-and-Blue Cornmeal Cobbler
Butterscotch Pudding
Baked Fudge Pudding
Classic Black and White Cookies
Rocky Road Bars
Jumbo Crumbly Blueberry Muffins
Boston Cream Doughnuts
Root Beer Float
Hot Fudge Walnut Sundae
You may well have enjoyed one or more of these treats. Or, you may have walked past those cakes a hundred times, thought about it, and said, “Next time,” to yourself. Well, the time is here. Diner Desserts is a tribute to an American institution and an invitation to you to join the celebration.