Southern Comfort - Buttermilk Pie

The trouble with buttermilk is that you can only buy it in quarts, so you always have some leftovers. After making some buttermilk oatmeal pancakes over Christmas, I found this buttermilk pie recipe courtesy of the fantastic Makeup Alley Food Board. This recipe is perfect for using up leftover buttermilk and doesn't require too many other fancy ingredients.

Buttermilk pie is a custard-like pie that's a Southern specialty. It also lends easily to variations by adding lemon and berries, cooked apple slices, or even chocolate.

Many of the recipes I had seen on other websites called for a lot more butter and egg yolks in the custard but Debby at Makeup Alley gave me her very refreshing and healthier recipe below.

Debby's Buttermilk Pie

A 9 inch pie dish

Crust:
One package of gingersnaps, enough to make 1 1/2 cups of crumbs
About 1/3 to 1/2 cup melted butter

Pulse the gingersnaps in a food processor until they become very fine crumbs. Moisten the crumbs with the melted butter until it resembles the texture of wet sand. Press tightly into the pie dish.

For filling:
2/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp butter, melted
1 1/2 cups lowfat buttermilk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 Tbsp all-purpose flour (Debby used 4 but I think 3 is enough)
freshly grated lemon zest from one lemon
about 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (my own addition)
freshly grated nutmeg (a sprinkling)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a bowl, whisk together sugar, buttermilk, eggs, flour, vanilla, lemon zest, salt and nutmeg. Make sure that there are no lumps (I had some trouble with this so I poured the custard over a sieve first).

Pour the filling into the shell. Bake the pie for about 45 minutes until puffed, golden brown, and set.

Let the pie cool on a rack and serve it at room temp or chilled with berries and whip cream.

==================
To make apple buttermilk pie, slice two tart apples (granny smith works well), cook with a little sugar and cinnamon until juices have evaporated and apples are soft. Put apple slices on the bottom of the pie dish before pouring the buttermilk custard mixture.