The story behind the legendary improvised dessert

A busload of hungry tourists and a restaurant kitchen with a near-empty pantry: What could have been a disaster turned into an improvised recipe that’s been pleasing crowds for nearly six decades.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

If you’re the chef in your house, then you already know Thanksgiving is often the most carefully planned, most high-stakes meal of the year – you’re telling me. But sometimes cooks have to improvise at the last minute, and the results can be amazing. That’s what happened at a small bakery just outside Zion National Park in Utah, where a mysterious dessert has become a tourist attraction unto itself. David Condos with member station KUER tells the sweet story.

DAVID CONDOS, BYLINE: Inside the Bumbleberry Bakery, a steady stream of tourists walk up to get a taste of local history. Visitors Calum and Amanda Nelson, from California, picked two pieces of pie a la mode. The ingredients of this gooey, purple filling are classified. But after scooping up a bite, Calum takes a guess.

CALUM NELSON: It’s like black currant and blackberry and something else.

AMANDA NELSON: (Laughter) The mystery ingredient.

NELSON: The mystery ingredient. Yeah, yeah.

NELSON: (Laughter).

CONDOS: This secret recipe started by accident in the mid 1960s, when the restaurant was run by Grandma Constance Madsen. Here’s how her granddaughter, Melanie Madsen, tells the story. One day, a big bus of tourists rolled in unexpectedly, and Grandma didn’t have enough of any single pie filling to feed the hungry crowd.

MELANIE MADSEN: There was never such thing as being closed. If there was someone who came and hadn’t eaten, it didn’t matter if the stove had been turned off and the oven had shut down. She would go fix something.

CONDOS: So Grandma bumbled together a combination of whatever berries were on hand and served the pies. Melanie says word spread quickly from one tourist bus to the next. By the end of that summer, bumbleberry pie was a thing. It…