High Altitude Chess Pie
This traditional chess pie starts with a flaky all butter pastry crust, filled with sweet, creamy custard. A delicious pie for Thanksgiving!
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 9 Inch Deep Dish Pie Pan or Tart Pan
- Electric Mixer (Stand or Hand-Held)
Ingredients
Crust
- ½ recipe All Butter Pie Dough (1 single pie crust)
Filling
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp yellow cornmeal
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
Crust
- Prepare 1/2 Recipe Pie Dough (or make the full recipe, and freeze half the dough for another pie).
- Roll the dough out into a circle, and fit it into your pie pan. Fold the edges under and crimp the edges. Freeze the crust for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Lay a piece of parchment paper over the frozen crust, and fill with dried beans or pie weights.
- Bake the crust on the center oven rack for 25 minutes. Remove the beans and the paper from the crust, then return the crust to the oven and bake for another 15-25 minutes, until it's golden brown and completely baked through. If the bottom of the crust puffs up a little, just gently press it flat again with a spoon. Set the crust aside while you make the filling.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 300 F.
Filling
- With a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or a hand held electric mixer), beat the sugar and butter on medium speed for 3-4 minutes, until fluffy. Scrape the bowl down.
- Add the flour, cornmeal and salt, and mix until combined.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after adding each, then beat in the cream, vanilla and lemon juice until the batter is smooth and well combined.
Bake
- Pour the filling into the prebaked crust. Bake the pie at 300 F on the center oven rack for about 50 minutes, until the top of the filling is golden brown.
- Set the pie on a wire rack to cool for one hour at room temperature, then refrigerate for several hours until completely cooled.
Serving
- I recommend making a batch of stabilized whipped cream to serve with slices of pie.
Notes
Store leftover pie in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.
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