Do you like pie? Have a favorite? I have several favorites. Cherry pies made with cherries fresh off a tree or froaen or canned are hard to beat. Pecan pie is one you can always depend on being good and very sweet. My mom made the best chocolate cream pie. It was so good that when she took it to a church dinner, the ladies in the kitchen in charge of slicing the cakes and pies just sliced Mom’s pie and kept it in the kitchen! I like apple pie, chess pie, chocolate chip & nut pie, lemon pie, butterscotch pie. I could go on. And on.
You might have seen this next picture of the two pies I made for our church’s homecoming dinner on FB. One is a chocolate chip pie. The other is apple. The chocolate chip pie is a favorite in our family. In fact, we sometimes call it a “mother-in-law” pie because I nearly always bake one whenever my son-in-law comes for a visit. Maybe I should just call it an “in-law” pie since I got the recipe years ago from my sister-in-law.
When I posted the picture on Facebook, many had never heard of a chocolate chip pie. It is similar to a pie that has a copyrighted name – Derby – and a secret recipe. I have been told it has a bit of bourbon in it, but that wasn’t part of my sister-in-law’s recipe. Our pie is super easy to make and nearly always turns out good although even though I stick to my sister-in-law’s recipe, hers always look different than mine. But both taste good. I shared the recipe on my FB page, but here it is again if you’re interested.
Chocolate Chip Pie
Mix 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup of self-rising flour. Add to that 1/2 cup softened margarine, 2 eggs (slightly beaten), 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Last stir in 1 cup chopped nuts (I use pecans) and 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips. Put the mixture into an unbaked pie shell and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 45 to 55 minutes or, as us old-fashioned cooks like to say, until it’s done. It is especially good while the pie is still warm from the oven.
Pies were actually termed ‘pyes’ in medieval England. It wasn’t until the 1500s that someone had the novel idea of filling a pie with fruit rather than meat, and it is thought that the very first cherry pie was sampled by Queen Elizabeth I herself! Check out more facts about pies you might not know here.
I like the chocolate chip pie, but I’m glad someone had the great idea to put fruit in those pies. Those are my favorites, and I bake a lot of them, especially blackberry since I go blackberry picking every summer and have plenty of berries in the freezer. I used to have frozen cherries, but don’t have a cherry tree anymore. I buy tart cherries in a can now. A fair substitute. And when fall comes and apples are plentiful, I like to make apple pies. I have a unique recipe for my apple pie that I found somewhere, but I don’t remember where. It wasn’t a recipe passed down from family, but I think it makes a best ever apple pie. If you want the recipe you can check out my posts here from five years ago that’s all about being thankful and making apple pie.
Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness. ~Jane Austen
When I posted the pictures online last week, someone left a comment that she had used that apple pie recipe from my blog post and that her family loved it. My pies disappeared at our homecoming dinner. I knew the chocolate chip pie would go fast, but I had sort of expected the apple pie to go wanting since I knew there would be many yummy desserts there. Turns out apple pie can be a favorite of pie lovers too. I had to settle for one piece left to bring home. I didn’t share it with my husband. 
EDITORIAL in the New York Times, 1902, in response to an Englishman’s suggestion that Americans should reduce their daily pie eating to two days per week.
“It is utterly insufficient (to eat pie only twice a week), as anyone who knows the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy must admit. Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents the calendar of the changing seasons. Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie-eating people can ever be permanently vanquished.”
I like to include a pie now and again in my stories. In my Rosey Corner books, Angel Sister, Small Town Girl, Love Comes Home, a brown sugar pie played such a part in the stories that my editor asked me to put the recipe at the end of the last book, Love Comes Home. That was fun. Jay did love that pie and when he came home from the war, he was ready to eat the whole pie that Nadine made for his first dinner back in Rosey Corner. She was ready for him and had made two.
Winner of my Book Giveaway
Thanks to all of you who entered to win Suzanne Woods Fisher’s new release, A Healing Touch, and my newest release, The Song of Sourwood Mountain. I appreciated all your comments about how you shared about books you enjoy. That is so great and such a help to writers like Suzanne and me.
The winner, chosen by random drawing, was Diana H. from California. She said she had already won my book back in the summer from a book reviewing blog but realized she had never received it. Books do sometimes get lost in the mail. I will hope the one I send out to her won’t have the same fate. It seems she was meant to win a copy.
By the way, if you ever win one of my giveaways and don’t receive the book prize or whatever prize after a week or so, please let me know. As I said, things do get lost in the mail, and if any of my book prizes don’t make it to the winner, I want to know so I can resend it.
Now back to pies.
What is your favorite pie or dessert?