Lemon Chess Pie (Page 678)

Lemon Chess Pie

Chess Pie is an old fashioned southern invention.  Most recipe's call for simple ingredients including eggs, butter, sugar, cream/milk/buttermilk and some sort of texture like cornmeal or even cake crumbs and vinegar. Having a pre-made pie crust on hand is the hard part.  Once you have the pie crust made and pre-baked the pie itself is very easy.

Pie Crust Rested in Refrigerator 

 Make sure your pie crust dough has plenty of time in the refrigerator before you roll it out.

Fill Pre Baked Crust with Filling

Pre-bake with pie weights in the crust and make sure they come all the way up the side, or your crust will droop.

 There are lots of variations on this basic recipe, and I chose to do the lemon version.  The recipe calls for lemon juice to replace some of the liquid and lemon zest.

Finished Product with Slight Droop

The filling does not puff up that much, so a shallow pie plate is perfect. Unfortunately, I went with the deep dish which gives you lots of crust. It seemed to take much longer to bake than the recipe suggested, I went over 15 minutes longer and still think it could have used more.

I loved this pie. It tastes like a lemon bar and is really sweet and slightly sour because of the vinegar and lemon.  Definitely needs some whip cream or ice cream to cut the sweet/sour taste.

Mike: 5/5

Julie: meh

Ed, would rather have Marie Calendar's Coconut Cream.