There’s a unique dessert that’s found only in Surry County, North Carolina. It has a whole trail dedicated to it, with restaurants where you can find the dish. For this week’s Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Reyna Drake tried the treat for herself to discover — what exactly is sonker?
It turns out sonker is a deep-dish style dessert, a hybrid between cobbler and pie. Traditionally, it’s been considered a good way to use up fruit before it goes bad.
The origins date back to Surry County's roots, when Scottish and Irish immigrants settled in the Yadkin Valley in the early 1700s.
It’s thought that the word itself, sonker, comes from the Scottish dialect. Another theory, though, is that it refers to the crust of the dessert, according to Robert DeVos, owner of 25 Summit Restaurant in Pilot Mountain.
"Some say just the way it kind of sinks in when using overripe fruits and stuff like that, just kind of gives it that 'sunk' or 'sinking' effect to it," DeVos says.
DeVos serves a sonker trio, featuring three different flavors. Currently, that's mango-pineapple, strawberry, and mixed berry sonker — all presented with ice cream.
"We usually try to have something that's more in season," DeVos says. "I know that we had strawberry when it was in season. We had the local strawberry farm that was selling strawberries out in the parking lot."
The sonker at 25 Summit has a cake-like crust. DeVos says he's had people say it reminds them of their own family recipes. But he adds that everyone has a personal take on the dessert.
"So, if you go to different restaurants in the area on the trail, they all have their own spin of the sonker dish," DeVos says. "Whether it's the recipe, the place that they represent or [their] display in the case or on the plate for their guests."
Just up the road, at Miss Angel’s Heavenly Pies in Mount Airy, sonker comes topped with alcoholic ice cream, and there, it's spelled zonker.
"Our twist, of course, is we call it bonkers for zonkers, and bonkers for zonkers basically means we're twisting on the alcohol," says owner and baker Angela Shur.
The crust on Shur’s sonker is similar to pie crust. But she said she sweetens it and adds a glaze at the end.
Shur is originally from New York. She says she hadn't heard about sonker until locals in Mount Airy started asking for it.
"When I moved down here, a lot of the people started coming in and asking me, the old-timers, because they knew I grew the fruit. Can you make me a zonker?" she said. "And I had no idea what they were talking about, so I had to research it, and I realized it's really our [New York] version of a cobbler because they don't call it cobblers down here in Surry County. They call it zonkers."
Shur says that in her time in Mount Airy, she learned it’s important to carry community desserts to keep tradition alive.
"You're teaching the younger generation as well what it is because they're coming in with the older generation, and you'll see them sharing," she says.
Both Miss Angel’s Heavenly Pies and 25 Summit Restaurant are on the Surry Sonker Trail, which has a total of 11 stops.