Rhubarb Custard Pie

The title of this recipe kind of threw me, at first. I was expecting milk in the recipe. So much so that I skipped a glass of milk with my supper, knowing I would be baking the pie after supper and wanting to have enough milk on hand to do a custard.

Hah, turns out I should have had the milk! Not a drop of milk in this recipe, hence the curious use of the word "custard."

I regret the time it took to "finely chop" the rhubarb, per recipe instructions. In every rhubarb pie I've ever made, I just chop into chunks, usually about half inch, to allow all the sugary goodness to have proper surface to cling to the fruit, and give a nice solid fruit bite for pie consumers. It appeared that I so finely chopped that rhubarb, it all but disappeared into the sugar/egg coagulation, with the surface rhubarb slices peeking out through the top crust design as bone-dry wisps of their former juicy selves.

It being the Bicentennial year for the State of Maine, and this recipe being in the Bicentennial Cookbook, I did choose to have a little fun with the top crust. The recipe calls for laying an x-cross open weave top crust. As you can see, I wanted to identify the bicentennial, and what better way than "200" for a top crust decoration?!

This pie turned out to be edible. But my taste buds were expecting the combination of one of my fav fruits, rhubarb, and one of my fav pies, custard. Did not meet taste bud expectations for either category. 

As with virtually every recipe in this book, however, it is the story that takes the prize. The person submitting this recipe describes her sentimental attachment to the fruit itself, having been given rhubarb plants by a co-worker when she was young, and moving those plants each time she moved, so that they would always be with her. Very sweet!