Quintessentially American Cuisine

I was talking to my friend Remy Saturday evening (there you go Remy!), and she was mentioning that she had been doing some cooking, and then promptly disparaged that the blondies she had just turned out were hardly cooking. What! So I shared with her that my latest ruminations on food had been precisely about how warm-and-gooey were a quintessentially American food characteristic.
When I am in France, people invariably ask me what it is Americans eat, since the prevailing notion is that a) Americans only eat at McD's, and b) Americans are all obese, because of a) no doubt, thereby proving the veracity of a). Since I was not gaining weight, the question also suggested I might perhaps be starving myself. Of course, there is a fair amount of chauvinism inherent in the question, the French being hugely chauvinistic and especially in the area of food. I shamefully admit that, given the heavy weight (sorry) of cultural subtext, I have trouble answering the question.
Of course, American food is, above all, fusion, and has been from the beginning. Gumbo. Corn bread. Fudge. Chowder. Chili. California roll sushi. But there is still something native about it, it isn't all just borrowed, it has its own truth, like jazz. (NOT like Apple pie).
I believe this element to be "warm-and-gooey". I cannot find warm helf-unbaked cookies in France. The closest French cuisine comes to it might be souffle (oh, yeah, I can whip that up in a sec) but it's much more cake-and-fluid that gooey. Or maybe creme brulee, though that's custardy, not the same, folks. I think the Brits started it with pudding, but British puddings retain cakiness. On these colder days, I often find myself reaching for warm-and-gooey as my goal, especially of course in the dessert realm. I have got to try Aussie sticky-date-pudding again (which I would need to make since I can't find it here anywhere, even at that Oh-So-Australian Outback Steakhouse). This winter, all five weeks of it, it's been bread pudding, peach and blackberry crisp (thanks for the correction Pica!), baked apples in caramel cream.
There you go, Remy, you go girl!