Mom’s Recipe Box- Butterscotch Pie

Mom’s Recipe Box

My mother has been gone since 1991 but there are lots of ways I stay close to her. Sometimes I drive to the cemetery where she and my father are buried. I get out and walk to their grave stone and just sit and contemplate their lives.

Other times I look at photographs or read mom’s letters that she wrote to me while I was in college. I also have her recipe box and from time to time I go through it and and remember.

Some of the recipes are clipped from newspapers or were given to her by friends who wrote them out and gave them to her. The ones I love the most are the ones in her handwriting, dirty and stained with use, time and occasionally a splash of whatever she was making.

All of these cards (except the dirtiest, oldest one) I have memorized. In fact, we had her stroganoff on Sunday and her spaghetti last Friday night. The macaroni casserole is requested at every major holiday and I’ve often joked that I could make it blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. The one she made most often was without a doubt the one labeled “Biscuits.”

She must have written that one down for me when I married because she and her mother, Grandma Layne, made them every day and sometimes twice a day. Of all my memories of mom in the kitchen the one that is most vivid is seeing her making biscuits, squishing up the ingredients with her hand, rolling out the dough, cutting them out with her biscuit cutter and then shoving a tray in the oven. In this day and time we use bought biscuits and they are good, but not as good as mom’s biscuits.

Once I came in the kitchen to find she had my 2nd son, Justin, on one side of her and his cousin Creal on the other side. They were sitting on the counter top and thoroughly engrossed in the art of making biscuits. In between them was the biscuit dough and she was letting them take turns cutting out a biscuit. I don’t have a picture of it, but it’s frozen forever in my mind.

The dirtiest recipe and the one I’m sure that mom had the longest was my Grandma Bell’s butterscotch pie recipe. Mom got married when she was 16 and had me when she was 17. She loved her mother-in-law and I’m sure that Grandma taught her how to make this pie. It’s obvious by the condition of the card it’s written on that she made it (and another version that belonged to Aunt Ora, who I do not remember) very often.

Grandma Bell’s Butterscotch pie

Prepare pie crust and set aside (she always made her’s from scratch and so did my mom and Grandma Layne).

Pie crust

2 cups plain sifted flour

2/3 cup crisco

1 tsp. salt.

Mix – then add 1/3 cup cold water. Divide in half and roll out 2 pie crusts. Bake at 425 until light brown.

I cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup flour

a pinch of salt

2 cups milk

4 eggs (separate whites from yellow)

4 tbs. butter

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Mix sugar and flour (or 4 tb. corn starch) and salt

(Before you add 2 cups of milk to mixture–add 4 egg yolks to milk and beat with a fork until blended well.}

Add milk and egg mixture and bring to boil stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and add 4 tbs. butter and 1 tsp. vanilla, stir and pour into pie crust.

Prepare your meringue from 4 egg whites.

Allow the whites to be room temperature before you begin

add 1/4 tsp Cream of Tarter and 1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pour eggs whites into a clean bowl.

Whip the egg whites until they are glossy and smooth, then add the Cream of Tartar, Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites about a tablespoon at a time, beating after each addition until the sugar is all mixed in. Continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Put half on each pie and bake until the peaks of meringue are light brown.