Chocolate Chess Pie

The week after Denise's birthday. Returning, as always. The world doesn't pause for your grief, so you pace it — grieve in the morning, walk the route by eight, deliver the mail by noon, cook in the evening, sleep if you can, and do it again. The rhythm is the medicine. The routine is the splint that holds the broken bone while it heals, except this bone never fully heals — it just gets strong enough to bear weight, and bearing weight is what I do.

Mt. Zion homecoming was this Sunday — the annual celebration that brings the church family back together, and this year it was especially meaningful because Pastor Williams announced he's thinking about retirement. Not now — maybe in a few years — but the announcement landed in the congregation like a stone in a pond, ripples going out in every direction. Pastor Williams has been our shepherd for thirty-five years. He baptized all four of my children. He married Rosetta and me. He buried Denise. The idea of Mt. Zion without him is like the idea of Memphis without the river — technically possible but missing something essential.

I smoked six shoulders for homecoming, as I do every year, and pulled them in the church kitchen with Walter Jr. and Deacon Harris, and served them in the fellowship hall to three hundred people who came to celebrate not just the church but the community and the continuity and the fact that we are still here — still in Orange Mound, still at Mt. Zion, still eating pulled pork and singing hymns and fighting for each other. Gentrification is at the gates. The world is changing. But this church, this food, this family — these things endure. They endure because people like me refuse to stop showing up, and showing up is the most powerful act of resistance there is.

I made sweet potato pie for the homecoming dessert table — Mama's recipe, baked by Rosetta, perfect as always. A woman in the fellowship hall, someone I didn't recognize, ate a slice and said, "Who made this pie?" Rosetta said, "My mother-in-law's recipe." The woman said, "Your mother-in-law is a genius." I said, from behind the pulled pork table, "Yes, she is." And she is. Pearlie Mae Johnson, genius of the kitchen, queen of the pie, big-baby-maker, the woman who taught me that feeding people is the same as loving them. She is a genius. She always was.

Now, sweet potato pie will always be the crown jewel of Mama’s dessert legacy, but if you’ve ever worked a homecoming dessert table, you know you need more than one pie to feed three hundred people who came hungry and plan to leave full. Chocolate chess pie is the other pie I always bring — old-fashioned, Southern to its bones, and simple enough that the ingredients don’t get in the way of the love you put into it. It sits right next to the sweet potato pie on that fellowship hall table, and it disappears just as fast. If feeding people is loving them, this pie is a whole sermon.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 (5 oz) can evaporated milk
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Set your oven to 350°F and place the unbaked pie crust in a 9-inch pie dish. Crimp the edges however your mama taught you.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt until no lumps remain.
Add the wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the evaporated milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Mix until the filling is smooth and glossy.
Pour and bake. Pour the filling into the unbaked pie crust. Bake at 350°F for 42 to 48 minutes, until the top is set and has a slight crackle to it. The center will still have a gentle jiggle — that’s what you want. It firms up as it cools.
Cool completely. Let the pie rest on a wire rack for at least 2 hours before slicing. Chess pie needs patience. It rewards you for waiting.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chocolate Chess Pie — Mama’s Table, Still Set