Cousin Alvine’s Rhubarb Cream Pie is a pretty old-fashioned pie with a pleasingly tart filling. The golden lattice top crust lends visual appeal while the extra sprinkle of cinnamon adds just the right touch of spice. Though it has taken me too long to try it, I have to say it is really delicious!

Things We Take for Granted

In the small town where I grew up, pies were plentiful. Pretty pies piled high with meringue or topped with decorative golden brown crusts were common. They included a wide variety of delicious fillings. Some made good use of plentiful seasonal produce. Others were designed to stretch a dollar.

In the community cookbooks from that small town there were recipes for Peanut Butter Chiffon Pie, Autumn Harvest Pie, Kentucky Transparent Pie, Coconut Cream Pie, Mock Apple Pie, Blissful Banana Pie, Moonshine Pie, Malt Shop Pie, Chocolate Chess Pie, Pecan Praline Pie, and….. Rhubarb Cream Pie. At a church potluck you might see any of these pies and more. For holidays or special occasions, if company was coming or it was Sunday dinner, there would be at least one pie to bring to the table for dessert. Pies, and the clever sweet cooks who made them, were easy to come by in the storybook world of my youth.

With so much in the way of opportunity, why is it I never took a bite of a Rhubarb Cream Pie until today? It’s a fair question and a good one. The thing is, growing up, I never really had any trouble saying no to pie. I guess it didn’t seem all that special to me. Pies were such a fact of life that it must have seemed to me that I could afford to take them for granted. Never a fan of mystery ingredients or sweet fruit flavors I stuck to the pies that promised tart citrus flavors or smooth chocolate fillings. It seems I overlooked the rest. Unsure of what went into those other pretty pies I opted not to try them.

Tasting a Rhubarb Cream Pie

As it turns out that preference for tart citrus flavors is one reason I should have tried Rhubarb Cream Pie long ago. Made with tart stalks of pretty red and green rhubarb it has a significant tang. And, once you get past the crust (which I confess I still find challenging despite my documented disasters and learning curve last year), it is also an easy pie to make.

These days a fine homemade pie is harder to come by. You can find them here and there but you have to know where to look. Better yet, if you have one of those coveted special recipes, you can make one yourself. For me, there is no surer way to take a trip across the country, back to the place where my memories were made.

In fact, the whole process of making a pie is full of little cues that take me home. The sound of nested stainless steel bowls being pulled from the cabinet, the scrape of a measuring spoon against the edge of a container of baking powder, even the sound of water running into the sink can take me back. And then there is the smell of the tart rhubarb, of a freshly opened jar of ground cinnamon or of a pie baking in the oven. Even the motions specific to the kitchen, rolling the pie pastry, measuring sugar, stirring together the filling, remind me of where I’m from. Cooking is very grounding.

Special Recipes

I have my share of those special recipes. One of them comes from Cousin Alvine. Her house was at the end of the lane where I lived as a child. She was my dad’s and Aunt Hen’s first cousin and they grew up there together.

Alvine was also the church organist for as long as I can remember. When I decided to get married there was no question that she would be the one to do the music. One day, when we stopped by her house to talk about the wedding, she offered us a slice of her Rhubarb Cream Pie. Picky as ever, I declined. My husband-to-be, however, gladly enjoyed a slice…maybe even two.

Years later I decided to make a family cookbook. Near the end of the project I remembered that slice of pie and wrote to my cousin for the recipe. She wrote back:

Cousin Alvine's handwritten Rhubarb Cream Pie Recipe.

That was several years ago. I cherished the thought and memory behind the recipe but I was never really much of a pie baker. I confess that I find pie pastry, not to mention lattice tops, challenging. In the shuffle of finishing my project and organizing folders my cousin’s recipe got filed away in my now inactive genealogy project, instead of my kitchen files, without me ever baking her Rhubarb Cream Pie.

Rediscovering Treasure

Since then more things have changed. My cousin passed away several years ago. Since then I’ve started another project where I write about food and family and, again, I remembered her beautiful pie. I have even made some progress in making pie pastry and am glad for a chance to try my hand at making a lattice crust. So now I am happy to say that I finally baked this gorgeous pie for my family.

I may be slow but you can’t say that I never get there. I made the pie exactly as directed from crust up including the lattice top. And you know, it really is delicious! The filling is pleasingly tart and the cinnamon adds a nice touch of spice beneath the golden lattice crust. I don’t know what I’ve been waiting for all of these years. The secret has always been within my reach. It’s been there waiting for me to pick it up and take a trip back home.

Enjoy!