The American Southwest encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and parts of Texas — a region with distinct Indigenous Nations, Spanish colonial history, and Mexican cultural influence that together shape its dessert traditions. Native Nations including the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Tohono O’odham, and various Pueblo peoples each have food traditions tied to their specific land and agricultural practices.

Indigenous ingredients remain central to Southwestern baking: blue cornmeal, mesquite flour, piñon nuts, prickly pear, and saguaro fruit appear in both traditional preparations and contemporary baking. These ingredients reflect centuries of cultivation and land knowledge specific to desert ecosystems.

Spanish colonial settlement beginning in the 16th century introduced wheat flour, lard, cinnamon, and sugar to the region, which combined with existing Indigenous ingredients to produce a distinct Southwestern baking tradition. Biscochitos — anise and cinnamon shortbread cookies — are the official state cookie of New Mexico and one of the clearest examples of this cross-cultural baking history. Sopapillas, flan, and empanadas reflect Spanish and Mexican influence common across the region.

Fry bread is widely present at Southwestern gatherings and powwows, but its origins are not pre-colonial. It developed in the mid-19th century as a survival food during the forced displacement of Native peoples, particularly the Long Walk of the Navajo, when government commodity rations — white flour, lard, salt — replaced traditional foodways. Its place in contemporary Native culture is debated within Indigenous communities themselves, and it should not be presented as a straightforwardly traditional food.