Buttermilk Pie — The Custard Shell That Holds a Birthday Tradition

Saturday is my birthday. January nineteenth. I will be sixty-six years old, which is a number that sits in the register of numbers that feel abstract until they are yours. Sixty seemed old when I was forty-five. Sixty-five was Medicare and doctor visits and the year I finally acknowledged that the left leg was going to ache in cold weather for the rest of my life. Sixty-six is simply the next year, which is to say: I woke up this morning and the stove needed wood and Frost needed feeding and Helen needed coffee and the day needed doing. That is exactly what sixty-six is. Another day. A good one.

Helen will make maple cream pie Saturday. She has made it for my birthday since 1981, which means I have had thirty-seven maple cream pies for my birthday and I have never once been tired of maple cream pie, which tells you something about either the pie or the woman who makes it. The pie is not complicated: maple syrup from our own trees, eggs, cream, a blind-baked shell. The filling bakes until set. The maple flavor of the finished pie is extraordinary in the way that ingredients from your own land are extraordinary — they taste like place. This pie tastes like March on our property, like cold sap turning sweet over heat, like every spring I have had on this land.

David called Sunday to wish me early happy birthday. He and Karen are driving up Saturday, which I told him was unnecessary and which I am glad he ignored, because Bergstrom men say things are unnecessary as a form of asking for them. The grandchildren will be here. Teddy has been told his grandfather is having a birthday and that birthdays mean pie, which he correctly identified as good news.

I spent the week making chowder — corn this time, from the frozen corn Helen put up last August. The frozen corn is better than people expect: if you freeze it at the right stage, just milky, not over-mature, it releases its sweetness back into the pot the way fresh does. The chowder on a January night, with the woodstove and the radio and Frost on the rug, is the right food in the right place.

Snow has been building since Wednesday. Two feet on the ground. Vermont is doing what Vermont does. I will be sixty-six in four days. The maples are full of sap that will run in March. I am patient. We all are, up here. It is how we survive the winters.

Helen’s maple cream pie is hers alone — built from our trees, our March, our thirty-seven years of doing this — and I would not pretend to reconstruct it here. But the spirit of it lives in any custard pie made the honest way: a blind-baked shell, a handful of real ingredients, heat and patience and a filling that sets just so. This buttermilk pie is that same tradition in a different key — the kind of pie that asks nothing of you but attention, and gives back something that tastes like place, like home, like a birthday worth having.

Buttermilk Pie

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 50 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Instructions

1. Blind-bake the shell. Preheat oven to 400°F. Line the pie shell with parchment and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake 12 minutes, then remove weights and parchment and bake another 5 minutes until the bottom looks dry and just barely golden. Remove from oven and reduce heat to 325°F.
2. Make the filling. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until smooth. Add the sugar and flour and whisk until fully combined. Pour in the melted butter and whisk again. Add the buttermilk, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt. Whisk until the filling is smooth and uniform.
3. Fill and bake. Pour the buttermilk filling into the warm blind-baked shell. Grate a pinch of nutmeg over the top. Carefully transfer to the 325°F oven and bake 45–50 minutes, until the edges are set and the center has just a slight wobble — it will continue to firm as it cools.
4. Cool completely. Remove from the oven and let the pie cool on a wire rack for at least 2 hours before slicing. The custard needs time to set fully. Do not rush this step.
5. Serve. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled. A dollop of lightly whipped cream alongside is welcome but not required — the pie stands well on its own.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 53g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 210mg