Florida Senate Names Official State Dessert, And It's Not Key Lime Pie

The Florida Senate probably has a few pressing matters to deal with, such as... never mind. But evidently none of them are as important as voting on a new state dessert. No, it's not key lime pie as you might think. Key lime pie is already the state's official pie, so it doesn't make sense to call it the official dessert as well. Now's your chance to guess, before I make my great reveal (and in case you missed the photo at the top of this article). The Associated Press reports that the governing body has passed the bill proposing the new state dessert, and there's no citrus involved.

Florida's new state dessert is—drumroll please—strawberry shortcake. Despite my obsessiveness regarding food, I would not have guessed strawberry shortcake in a million years. It's never too late to learn new things, because apparently strawberries are a big industry in Florida, and I had no idea.

Florida Farm and Family magazine says that Florida ranks as the number two state in strawberry production, second to California. So strawberry shortcake as the official state dessert doesn't seem too far fetched all of a sudden.

In a hilarious joke that I'm sure everyone rolled around laughing at, Republican Senator Danny Burgess said his bill was a "berry important piece of legislation." Dads nationwide will probably give him a standing ovation. Burgess is a representative of Plant City, which is where winter strawberry crops are grown during the year. We've got to get our strawberries somewhere when it's cold in the rest of the country, right?

As desserts go, strawberry shortcake is pretty easygoing, consisting of lightly sweetened biscuits sandwiched around whipped cream and fresh strawberries. The Takeout's home state of Illinois surprisingly doesn't have a state dessert (but we do have a state pie, which is pumpkin). This leaves me wondering what our state dessert should be. Our state grain is corn, and state fruit is a GoldRush apple (voted on in 2007), so take that as you will.

There is a small catch, however. In order for the strawberry shortcake to be an "official" state dessert version of the dish, it needs to be topped with Florida-made whipped cream, which is highly specific. So not all strawberry shortcakes can be considered equal in a Floridian's eyes, though they are all pretty delicious in mine.