It was a custom, in the rural Missouri town where I grew up, to bake a pie on New Year’s Eve, place it on a neighbor’s front porch, ring the doorbell, then run off into the night, leaving the recipient to enjoy the pie and wonder who left it.
At least it was until New Year’s Eve 1962 when Arlene Spoonmacher made a chocolate meringue pie using Ex-Lax in lieu of Hershey’s Cocoa and left it on Wanda Faye Green's front porch. Wanda Faye, Arlene later told the sheriff, had been making goo-goo eyes at her husband at church the previous Sunday. Wanda Faye survived but lost 12 pounds she didn’t need to lose. After that, nobody in town would touch a pie they or an immediate family member hadn’t made themselves, so the custom died out.
Still, to this very day, I get a hankering for pie on New Year’s Eve. This year I decided to make chess pie. The decision was easy: It’s the only pie I know how to make.
Chess pie, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a southern speciality. It is rich, smooth, custardy and darn near foolproof. If I can make one, you can, too. Legend has it the pie got its name when someone who was wowed by what he was eating asked the cook what kind of pie it was. “It ain’t nothing special,” she drawled. “It’s jest pie.”
Plain chess pie is good but lemon chess pie rises several notches above it when it comes to delicious delectability.
I usually make mine with bottled lemon juice but today’s pie is gonna be extra special because I’m making it with lemons from our next door neighbors’ tree, which is so heavily laden with ripe, tart fruit it is literally bending over.
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| Our neighbors' lemon tree. It's very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat unless it's baked into Tom Dryden's world-famous Lemon Chess Pie. |
We have an open invitation to help ourselves, so I went over and picked three of them — lemons the size of softballs containing so much juice I only needed one to make this recipe. What I’ll do with the other two I haven’t a clue.
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| Disregard the greenish color. This is what lemons, fresh-from-the-tree, look like. |
And so, without further adieu — I know you’re anxious to start cooking — here’s everything you need to know to make Tom Dryden’s World-Famous Lemon Chess Pie.
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Step 2: Squeeze 1/2 cup of lemon juice from softball-sized lemon taken from neighbor’s tree. If your neighbors don’t have a lemon tree, buy some small ones at the store and squeeze them until you have half a cup of juice. (Helpful tip: Be sure to remove the seeds from the juice, otherwise someone could choke on them which wouldn’t get 2019 off to a good start for you or them.) If it’s too much work to squeeze the lemons, you can use ReaLemon bottled juice or juice from one of those plastic lemons you’ll find in the produce section in which case you don’t have to worry about seeds.
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| Dice that lemon rind into small pieces, as shown here |
Step 3: Remove skin from half of the gigantic lemon (or from two small lemons), peel away and discard the pulp inside, and, using a zester, grate the skin. If you do not have a zester (the first time I made this pie I had to look online to find out what a zester is) you can do what I do and dice it into really, really tiny eensy-bitsy pieces with a sharp knife.
Step 4: Remove two frozen pie shells from freezer and allow them to come to room temperature — about 15 minutes. I should have done this before I started Step 1 but I didn’t.
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| You know what butter looks like but everyone's so damn visually-oriented these days they expect a photo of just about everything so I'm showing you one here. |
Step 5: Nuke 2 cups of butter for about 40 seconds until it is soft but not melted. Place in large bowl of stand mixer.
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| Surely you know what a bag of sugar looks like. If you don't, stop right now because you aren't going to be able to make this pie, you're too stupid. |
Step 6: Add 2 cups of sugar.
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| And the beat goes on. For about two minutes or until creamy. |
Step 7: Beat butter and sugar until creamy.
Step 8: Go to fridge for eggs. Realize you don’t have any.
Step 9: Drive two miles to supermarket and buy eggs.
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| Aunt Margaret's mixer is used to beat the eggs. |
Step 10: Using a different mixer (or the same one, once you have washed the beaters), beat 10 eggs thoroughly. (Helpful tip: Be sure to crack the eggs open, discard the shells, and place the yolks/whites in a bowl before beating.) In this picture I’m using our 1970s olive green General Electric portable mixer that was given to us as a wedding present by my Aunt Margaret, who was a terrific cook. Margaret had a major sweet tooth — she always had freshly-baked cakes and/or pies on hand, and kept a huge glass candy bowl filled with Brach’s Pick-A-Mix on her coffee table. Despite her sweet tooth, Aunt Margaret never weighed more than 100 pounds, if that. Aunt Margaret’s green mixer has moved with us to St. Louis, Chicago, Manhattan, Connecticut and Florida and we always think fondly of her whenever we use it. She would have most definitely approved of this pie.
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| Do not add the lemon juice at this step like I'm doing here. |
Step 11: Pour beaten eggs into butter/sugar mixture and beat until smooth. (I forgot to take a picture of this important step so I'm showing a picture of the lemon juice being added, which comes later. Try to imagine this cup contains the beaten eggs. You can imagine that without seeing a picture, can't you?)
Step 12: Go to pantry for flour and corn meal. Realize you are out of flour.
Step 13: Return to supermarket to buy flour.
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| Who would have thunk Clinton is a Lemon Chess Pie fan too? |
Step 14: After noting that the recipe on the web site you are following calls for two cups of milk, realize that this isn’t the recipe for which you are famous — your Lemon Chess Pie recipe isn't made with milk. This recipe is for something called “Bill Clinton’s Lemon Chess Pie.” Given the vast quantities of butter, sugar, eggs and milk it contains, it’s probably one of the main reasons he had to undergo open heart surgery.
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| Now you can add the lemon juice, as well as the rest of the ingredients |
Step 15: Feeling foolish, thinking you were making the recipe you’ve made for years (but, in your defense, you haven’t made for at least a year), add to butter/sugar/egg mixture two cups of milk, two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons of corn meal, lemon juice and lemon zest.
Step 16: Beat for a couple of minutes on ‘high.” (Helpful tip: Mixer should be on “high,” not you.)
Step 17: Call small dog over (if available) to lick up any mixture that splatters on the floor.
Step 18: Pour mixture into two pie shells.
Step 19: Realizing you have enough mixture left over for two more pies, place filled pies in oven for 35 to 38 minutes.
Step 20: While pies are baking, return to supermarket to buy two more frozen pie shells.
Step 21: Remove pies from oven once the filling begins to brown around the edges. Don't let the pie crusts get too brown!
Step 22: Pour remaining mixture into the two new pie shells, and bake per step 19.
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| Four picture perfect pies |
Step 23: Allow all four pies to cool.
Step 24: Take one pie to neighbor whose lemons you stole.
Step 25: Take another pie to another neighbor.
Step 26: Slice into third pie and realize you should have tasted it before you gave it to your neighbors but then relax because …. this pie is incredible. Bill Clinton’s pie is much, much, much tastier than the one you’ve been making all these years but then, your wife is better than his — she doesn’t run maniacally for president then write tell-all books blaming everyone else but herself for her losses — and, all things considered, you’d rather be remembered for having a wonderful sweet wife than for having a stupid pie recipe.
Step 27: Over next two hours polish off third pie.
Step 28: Place fourth pie in fridge to share with your significant other. You’re not going out tonight because you don’t like to go out on New Year’s Eve — not that you have had any invitations anyway — and will be staying in to watch episodes 3 and 4 of “Escape at Dannemora” on Showtime for which Patricia Arquette is all but guaranteed a Best Actress Emmy.
Step 29: Have a Happy New Year and remember to stay away from any chocolate pies found on your doorstep because they might not be chocolate after all.
Makes two deep-dish or four regular-sized pies
(Note: I changed Bill Clinton's recipe ever-so-slightly to, as the judges on American Idol used to tell contestants, “make it my own.”)
Unbaked pie shell
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
10 beaten eggs (shells removed)
2 cups milk — 1% is fine
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons corn meal
1/2 cup lemon juice
Zest from 1/2 of a huge lemon or 2 small lemons
Mix ingredients thoroughly (beat eggs separately and add to butter/sugar mixture) in order listed, pour into four pie shells, and bake 35-38 minutes @ 350 degrees.
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