National Boston Cream Pie Day is observed annually on October 23. Pie lovers move along. Cake lovers, pull up a chair. Let’s celebrate the cake with an identity crisis! Boston Cream Pie is a chocolate frosted, custard filled cake that is loved by millions.
In 1856, at Boston’s Parker House Hotel, Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian created this pudding and cake combination which comprises two layers of sponge cake filled with vanilla flavored custard or creme patisserie. The cake is then topped with a chocolate glaze, such as a ganache or sometimes powdered sugar and a cherry.
- A Boston cream pie is a cake that is filled with a custard or cream filling and frosted with chocolate.
- Although it is called a Boston cream pie, it is in fact a cake, and not a pie.
- The Boston cream pie is the official dessert of Massachusetts, declared as such in 1996.
- A Boston cream doughnut is a name for a Berliner filled with vanilla custard or crème pâtissière and topped with icing made from chocolate.
- The Boston cream doughnut was designated the official doughnut of Massachusetts in 2003.
- The world’s largest Boston Cream Pie was created in 2010 by culinary students at Southern New Hampshire University. The pastry measured 10 ft wide 1½ ft high and weighted over 1 ton.
- According to the American Pie Council, Americans buy more than 186 million pies at the grocery store each year. That is enough to stretch around the globe and beyond.
- 7% of American have also tried to pass off store bought pie as homemade.
- 1 in 5 Americans surveyed by the American Pie Council have eaten an entire pie by themselves.
- Apple pie is the go to favorite in 24 states in the United States.
- The first reference to “pyes” as food appeared in England as early as the 12th century.
- Apple pie was brought to the colonies by the British, Dutch and Swedes during the 17th and 18th centuries.
- “As easy as pie” is an American expression. It came from the 1890s when “pie” was a common slang expression meaning anything easy, a cinch; the expression “easy as pie” came from that.
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