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This Lemon Chess Pie recipe is so easy and always a hit! The filling is tart and sweet and delicious – it’s creamy and perfectly lemony. If you love chess pie this is the perfect lemon variation and much easier than lemon meringue pie!
BEST Lemon Pie Recipe
Chess pie has been around for a long time and there’s a reason it’s considered a classic pie: it’s so good! No one can resist a slice of this super easy lemon version! Once you know how to make lemon chess pie you won’t want to stop making it.
Chess pie has a creamy almost custard-like texture and it’s easy to flavor it (like making chocolate chess pie or maple chess pie). They’re the easiest pies to make because you just whisk your ingredients and pour them into your bowl – I love when a recipe is easy AND tastes so good!
Ingredients Needed
- Unsalted Butter: You can use salted, just omit the salt in the recipe
- Crust: For the crust, you can make my all-butter pie crust or use your favorite refrigerated dough. You will only need one pie dough round.
- Eggs: Eggs are what give the custard pie it’s structure – use large eggs
- All-Purpose Flour: Helps set the pie. I do not recommend using cornstarch as this pie has not been tested with it.
- Cornmeal: It’s not a chess pie without yellow cornmeal!
- Lemon Juice and Lemon Zest: Gives the lemon flavor – learn how to zest a lemon! I recommend using fresh lemon juice.
- Milk: May use whole or nonfat milk
How To Make Lemon Chess Pie Filling
- We’re going to partially bake the pie crust so that it fully bakes in the oven. Partially baking is like blind baking, only you do it half way.
- Whisk together melted butter, sugar, and eggs in a large bowl.
- Whisk in flour, cornmeal, lemon juice, milk, zest and salt. Pour mixture into crust. Top crust with a pie shield or strips of foil. Place pie on a baking sheet and bake until pie is golden on top and wiggles just a teeny bit in the center.
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Expert Tips
- Cover the pie with a pie shield to protect the edges and keep them from getting too over baked. Don’t have a shield? Use strips of aluminum foil.
- The pie is done when it’s just a little wobbly in the center and golden on top.
- You will need to let the pie cool completely before slicing it. This will give it time to fully set up – if you cut it too soon after it comes out of the oven the filling will ooze out.
- You can make a lemon buttermilk pie by subbing buttermilk for the milk!
- Serve it plain, with whipped cream, or ice cream!
Storing & Freezing
Chess pie will keep at room temperature for up to three days, but I usually keep it in the refrigerator if I’m not planning to serve it right away. You can make it up to 2 days ahead and store in the fridge. Once it’s fully cooled you can wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and freeze it. To thaw, just leave it out at room temperature before you want to serve it.
FAQs
This pie is a creamy custard pie with a slightly crisp top and crunchy crust. It’s flavored with lemon but can be made with so many lemon flavors.
Lemon Chess Pie Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 9-inch pie crust
- ¼ cup (57g) unsalted butter , melted
- 1 ½ cups (300g) granulated sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon (8g) all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cornmeal
- ¼ cup (59ml) lemon juice
- ¼ cup (59ml) milk
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Place pie crust in a 9-inch pie plate and chill at least 1 hour or freeze at least 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Line the pie crust with parchment paper and fill with pie weights. Bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven, carefully remove pie weights.
- While the pie crust is pre-baking, whisk together butter, sugar, and eggs. Whisk in flour, cornmeal, lemon juice, milk, zest and salt.
- Pour mixture into prepared crust. Top crust with a pie shield or strips of foil. Place pie on a baking sheet.
- Bake at 350° until pie is golden on top and wiggles just a teeny bit in the center, about 35-40 minutes.
- Cool completely before slicing. Store in refrigerator. Serve room temperature plain, or with whipped cream or ice cream.
Recipe Notes
- The baking instructions as written are for my homemade crust recipe. The all butter crust takes a bit longer to pre-bake (or bake in general) than a store bought crust.
- If you’re using a Pillsbury or similar store bought crust, you can start the oven at 425°F and just fill your pie, bake it 10 minutes at the high temperature and lower the oven temp to 350°F. If the pie starts to get too brown on top, tent it with foil.
- You know the pie is done baking when it’s light golden on top, slightly puffed, and only wiggles a little when the pie plate is tapped (if it rolls when tapped it’s not done in the center).
Your easy & delicious recipe is the closest one I’ve found to the one my mom always made. (I have her recipe somewhere in one of our many boxes after a 2000-mile move.) I remember her telling me that if a chess pie recipe is complicated, it isn’t vintage since these pies were made by folks with very limited ingredients & even more limited cash! I just made this again for my family to have for dessert tonight. Thanks for a perfect recipe.
Made this good but you definitely need to use the zest to amp the citrus flavor.
Easy and delicious!! Made it yesterday. Perfect tart and sweetness.
My mom made homemade chess pies, and they were so good.
If I use buttermilk do I still use the lemon juice? If no, do I double the amount of buttermilk?
Yes for the lemon juice – to add that bit of lemon flavor along with the lemon zest.
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