Chocolate Chip-n-Walnut Pie

From the Waites’ Women (Sissy, Reggie, and Gwennie)

Two of my Abbies, Reggie and Gwen, have told us an amazing story and have blissfully blessed us by baking this pie recipe for us over the years. Their Mother, Sissy Waites, worked at the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky in the summers and after school in 1957 and 1958.

Sissy would gather the ingredients for the pie and take them to Mrs. Kern to bake. Mrs. Kern’s husband, George, was the manager of the restaurant. The story goes that George developed the Derby Pie recipe with the help of his parents, Walter and Leaudra.

Although Sissy no longer makes the homemade crust (frozen pie crusts suffice), the ingredients are all the same:

Ingredients:
1 cup English walnuts (These may be substituted with regular walnuts and they should be in small pieces, not whole.)
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup sugar
½ cup flour
1 stick BUTTER, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 deep dish pie crust

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

• Mix flour and sugar, add eggs, and mix.

• Add cooled BUTTER, mixing thoroughly by hand.

• Add chocolate chips, walnuts, and vanilla.

• Bake pie shell approximately three minutes.

• Pour ingredients into pie shell and bake for 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

• If your oven doesn’t run very hot, you may need to bake the pie at 350 degrees or a little bit longer than 45 minutes.

• Pie should be golden brown on top, and just a little jiggly.

• Let cool before serving.

We Kentucky folk like to serve the pie with either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.