I love two things most of all about chess pie — that sweet, buttery baked custard pie well-known across the South but whose reach can be tasted in everything from Canadian butter tarts to Brooklyn-ish Crack Pies — one, that it has none of the fussiness usually associated with custards and flans (separated egg yolks, tempering, straining and water baths); you could, and in fact should, make this with any little chefs in your life with ease.
I also love that chess pie pronounces any flavors you add to it exceptionally well, like it’s holding a megaphone to them. A chess pie with a splash of rum is, in fact, a rum chess pie; a chess pie with lemon is buttery lemonade heaven and a chess pie to the tune of butterscotch will stop everyone in their tracks as they walk into your home and smell the brown sugar, butter and vanilla trifecta bouncing off the walls. The taste — booming with butterscotch — lives up to the aromatic promise, way better than the butterscotch pudding pie I’d thought about making first before deciding that it was too much work for a too muted flavor.
