Saltine Cracker Pie
Years ago, a regular section of most newspapers was the recipes and meal suggestions. Old timey recipes used by your relatives are as honored as ever and show up yearly on special holiday lunches and dinners.
Easter is always ham and something using boiled eggs such as egg salad, deviled eggs, potato salad and then garnished with evenly sliced boiled eggs on top and sprinkled with paprika.
Fourth of July is anything you can cook on the grill, mainly because it is so hot to heat up the kitchen anymore is wrong, just wrong. Hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, steaks, whatever your budget can afford. Also, other holidays that use the same menu items are Memorial and Labor Days.
Thanksgiving has its own set of standard menu items. How many folks make dressing any other time of the year? Turkeys are the center piece of the table with sides of green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, fruit salad, and hot yeast rolls. Some people include ham.
Christmas is mostly anything made with sugar or that you can ice. Cookies, cakes, pies, divinity, fudge.
From the files of the real old recipe box is the one for Cracker Pie. There are so many variations on this pie that they could fill a cookbook, but the most common one uses vanilla flavoring. Where did this recipe come from? Some say it was invented during the Civil War which I have my doubts since importing vanilla beans would be the last thing on the list of necessities.
Vanilla flavoring that we use comes from a parasitical vine that makes beautiful flowers and eventually these flowers become long yellow-green pods that contain the vanilla bean. Beans are processed at a high temperature and then crushed and added to an alcohol base.
Cracker Pie is short for Saltine Cracker pie. A restaurant in Macon, Len Berg’s, served it for most of the 100 years they were in business. And that is where I first tasted it. This melt in your mouth pie is so simple to make, does not require any talent for making pie crust, just throw it together and enjoy.
1 1/2 sleeve of saltine crackers, crushed, not pulverized
3 egg whites
1 cup of white sugar
2 tsps. of vanilla flavoring
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup of chopped pecans, can also use dates or walnuts, maybe some dried cherries or cranberries to add some color
Crush crackers in a bowl and set aside. Beat three egg whites, adding the sugar, until you get a stiff meringue, add the vanilla, baking powder and the nuts last. Then dump into the crushed crackers and mix.
Grease a pie pan and pour the mixture in and smooth on top.
Bake in 325 degree oven until slightly brown on top.
That’s all folks.
So gather the ingredients together and make the simplest dessert in the world. Some folks think it is pecan pie, some a custard pie, some add some whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream on top as if it wasn’t sweet enough.
Sorry about Halloween this year. Happy Halloween anyway.