Red Truck Bakery Cookbook: Pawpaw Chess Pie

June 2, 2021

It has been a minute and quite a busy time since my last post when I tried fresh mint punch over the summer during the pandemic. I did cook more things during 2020 and am very behind on updating here because I took an online class in the fall, then I had a baby in the spring! I am trying to get back to feeling more normal, hence, a several months late posting about something I made in October 2020.

That something I made was Pawpaw Chess Pie from The Red Truck Bakery Cookbook by Brian Noyes. I've wanted to try this recipe for a long time but couldn’t sort out how to get paw paw fruit until now. During the pandemic there were no farmer's markets in my area. I ended up buying it online here and it was shipped to me frozen. It was pricey, considering how little of the fruit is actually used in the pie, but the rest can be frozen and used in smoothies or however you might like to use the rest. Or you could be like me and forget you have it and accidentally let the remainder go bad in your fridge.

This recipe is fairly straightforward and easy, and the result is something I would describe as tasting like a piña colada in pie form. Not bad, but also not expected. Being pregnant at the time I cooked and tried this pie, I did enjoy pretending I was tasting an actual piña colada. However, it was warm rather than icy, so less good. Cooling the pie in the fridge improved the flavor slightly.

As in many pie recipes in this cookbook, this one starts with a homemade pie crust of graham cracker crumbs that needs to chill in the fridge for one hour before baking for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, the rest of the ingredients are combined and cooked on the stove before being poured into the chilled crust. It only takes about 10 minutes. And that’s it.

This pie gets 3 out of 5 red trucks from us. If you want to give it a try, the recipe is on page 74 of The Red Truck Bakery Cookbook by Brian Noyes.