I remembered eating a chess pie sometime in my youth at some party at somebody’s house. Beyond that I remembered nothing except it was delicious. As usual, I decided to search the Internet, and I found a likely recipe and I proceeded to modify it. Yeah!

Ingredients:

1 Unbaked 9" Pie Shell (make your own pie dough)
3 large or 2 jumbo eggs
2 Lemons

1 tsp. of Lemon rind
1 tsp. of corn meal
1 tbsp. of self-rising flour or (1 tbsp. of all purpose flour and a pinch of baking powder)
1/2 stick of butter
1 1/4 cups of sugar

½ cup of grated white cheddar cheese
1 tbsp. of Water

Directions:

Use an electric mixer and beat the eggs until they are fluffy. Add the water and the juice of 2 lemons and grate in approximately 1 tsp. of lemon rind; set the mixture aside.

Cream the butter, sugar, corn meal and flour using an electric mixer. Add the cheese, lemon and egg mixture and mix well.

Pour the mixture into the unbaked pie shell and bake at 350ºF for 30-40 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. (The pie will be a deep golden brown on top).

HERE IS AN INTERESTING VARIATION:

I made my own pie crust using the classic Crisco recipe.

I rolled the dough to 1/8" thick and used an inverted 12 oz. tumbler as a cutout tool. I then put each cutout into a spot in a 24 position mini-muffin pan, to form 24 small pie shells. I then poured the filling into each shell … it took a bit over one tablespoon per shell. The baking time was reduced … but I waited until the tops were a golden brown. Simply keep an eye on the baking and the time to remove the small pies will be obvious. I believe I got a total of 36 small pies from the above recipe.