All for Pie

Happy birthday to Our Grandmother of Cookrye! A big party was organized. I had nothing to do with the planning, so the whole thing went absolutely perfect. My gift was to bring her favorite pie. Not that I didn't say I brought it for the party. Nope, her gift was a whole pie, all to herself, to take home. (Fittingly, she happened to give me the cookbook from whence came the pie.)

We've met chess pie before, but let's reiterate the recipe:

Chess Pie 1 tbsp cornmeal or graham cracker crumbs 1¼ cups sugar 2 tbsp flour 3 eggs ½ cup butter or margarine 1 tbsp vanilla 1 tbsp vinegar (cider vinegar adds a nice flavor) 1 unbaked pie shell Heat oven to 350°. Mix crumbs, sugar and flour in a large bowl. Thoroughly beat in eggs. Whisk in the butter, beat well. Add vanilla and vinegar; pour into pie shell. Bake for 45 minutes (55 in a metal or foil pan). Mrs. W G Byrd, El Reno, Oklahoma; Favorite Recipes of America: Desserts; 1968

This pie is pretty quick unless you make the crust yourself. (I love when the good recipes are also the easy ones.) I would have flung this together in three minutes but for one crucial ingredient: graham cracker crumbs.

The original recipe uses a spoonful of cornmeal, and you might think I should follow what is written. But the first time I made this pie (somewhere well before 2010), we ran out of cornmeal and white vinegar. So I substituted graham cracker crumbs and cider vinegar. 

At the time, my grandmother (viz. the recipient of this pie) promptly declared it her favorite pie. You might think this was simply grandmotherly praise, but if so, she is committed. She has asked for a chess pie every time we've gotten together ever since. That is a lot of chess pies. I may someday try the recipe exactly as written, but I dared not mess with success on my grandmother's birthday.

I first attempted to borrow one graham cracker. (After all, the recipe only uses a tablespoon of crumbs.) I knocked on the door of every neighbor that's had toddlers in the yard. After getting past their bemusement, no one had any graham crackers in the house. I can't blame them because I didn't have any either, but I was selfishly annoyed all the same.

I then asked the neighbors with kooky, vaguely southwestern yard art. Surely, people with artistic scrap metal in the yard will think nothing of lending a life-saving culinary hand! Well, I was incorrect. Not only did they have no graham crackers (which was fine albeit disappointing), but the woman who answered the door looked at me like I proposed setting up a cocaine dispensary among her quirky decorations.

The very thought of buying a whole box of graham crackers just to pulverize one of them irked me deep in my cheapskate soul. So, I decided to make them for myself. I said to myself "We made that graham pie crust before! It was very easy!" Before getting out the mixing bowl and softening the butter, I remembered that Maida Heatter's recipe made a LOT of graham crackers. So, I quartered the ingredient amounts. This required doing a bit of recipe math, which led to, um, tabulated typewritten recipes.

This will not be the week I win the Dillard's gift certificate for typing excellence at secretarial school. 

I had one graham cracker which I could pulverize. I also had a lot of extra ones. Even when you quarter the recipe, you get a lot of crackers. I decided to go a bit British here and make "digestives," which apparently are sort of like graham crackers with the bottom. (I could easily be wrong about this.) I'm surprised that these aren't more popular on our side of the Atlantic. Chocolate and graham crackers are hardly a kooky foreign combination here in glorious America.

But the chocolate-bottomed grahams led to another problem: all the potential wasted chocolate in the bowl. 

Sending chocolate to the city dump is a disgrace. So, I folded over the paper I had baked the crackers on to expose its clean side, piled the extra chocolate onto it, and let it harden. Afterward, I cut it into small pieces and returned them to the chocolate chip bag.

After all this detouring, I finally got around to making the pie. And it is time to ask: was this one tablespoon of crumbs really worth it? 

 

Well it was worth it to me because sometimes this kind of thoroughly unnecessary baking is my idea of a good time. Also, I didn't have to interact with people at the grocery store. (Some days, you just can't manage the robotic flow of "how are you i'm fine how are you i'm fine how are you i'm fine.") Also, the pie came out perfect, and the day was a beautiful success!