• Chess Pie
• Chocolate Cream
• Penut Butter
• Pumpkin
• Raisin and Buttermilk
• Sour Cream and Pumpkin
• Sweet Potato

Long associated with the South, we had chess pie every Christmas when I was a child. I don’t know where my great grandmother got the recipe, but it was delicious.

Chess pie was my grandmother’s favorite as a little girl, and she continued the Christmas tradition well into her eighties. My sister and I looked forward to that Chess pie every year. We would eat the entire pie in one sitting if the grown-ups would let us.

One summer I had a craving for the sweet, custard filling, and asked my grandmother to make it for Sunday dinner. She told me that chess pie, so simple to make in today’s supermarket culture, was too special to have more than once a year. If I wanted something other than fruit pie, my great-grandmother would happily make a brown sugar pie, using brown sugar from the pantry and a single egg from the hen house. But chess pie, with five eggs and store-bought white sugar, was a special treat!

Chess pie has a custard filling: eggs, sugar, butter and a small amount of flour. I always make chess pie with white sugar the way my grandmother did, but brown sugar may be used instead. It’s often more regional and it’s quite delicious. Buttermilk is not a common ingredient in chess pie recipes, but it adds the texture and flavor I always associate with my Christmas pie.

The large quantity of eggs in the recipe makes the pie expand during baking. When it cools the filling will settle. You may end up with an unsightly wrinkled pie, but that is part of the charm.

Chess Pie

Ingredients

• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 5 eggs
• ⅔ cup buttermilk
• ½ cup melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• dough for a single pie crust

Directions

Prepare the Crust

Choose and prepare a pie crust dough, rolling out the dough and pressing it into the pie pan. Trim or crimp the crust, depending on the recipe you’ve chosen. If you are making a pastry crust, put the pie paninto the refrigerator to chill.

Make The Filling

Preheat the oven to 350°.

In a large bowl, combine sugar and flour. Beat in the eggs and buttermilk until blended. Stir in the melted butter and vanilla.

Bake

Pour filling into the piecrust.

Bake in for 45 minutes, or until filling is set.

Remove from the oven and let cool before serving.