Scene - Blogs - Pie that puts the fun back in funeral

Pie that puts the 'fun' back in 'funeral'
Published: 1/11/2012 7:30 AM
Last Modified: 1/10/2012 3:53 PM

Obviously, you don't have to wait until someone dies to enjoy funeral pie. Just consider renaming it before serving it -- like, "Pineapple Sour Cream Pie" or anything, really, without the word "funeral." JAMES D. WATTS JR./Photo stylist

A search for spicy pretzels offered me a near-death experience, of sorts. A really contrived "sorts," but still.

Before Christmas, I was looking through cookbooks above my stove for a spicy pretzel mix recipe, when I pulled out a black binder of some of Youngun's favorite dishes, and a blue-ruled 3x5 index card fluttered down to the counter top. My first reaction was "AUGH!" as I'm not used to things jumping out of my cabinets.

After calming down, I saw it was a recipe for Billye's "Funeral" Pie, complete with quotation marks -- perhaps to alert the baker who found this recipe that it was NOT pie made from funeral. Who knows.

Anyway, it sounded yummy, with crushed pineapple, sour cream, coconut cream pudding and a graham cracker crust. Sign me up, Duncan Hines!

I had never heard of such before, although I guessed it meant a pie that folks might take to someone in mourning so the poor soul didn't have to worry about cooking. I asked my editor about it, and she mentioned something about funeral cake -- another one I hadn't heard of before but, shamelessly, I just nodded my head like, "Oh, yeah, good ol' funeral cake ..."

For some folks, it seems, funeral cake is synonymous with Texas sheet cake. Not sure what that was, either, until I found this sheet cake recipe on the Pioneer Woman's web site. Yuh. Um. E.

But back to funeral pie, which totally needs a more appetizing name. I mean, it's better than "Death Pie." It's just too hard to market funeral pie, I guess. One of the first slogans that popped to mind was, "Funeral pie: Put the 'Mmmm' back in mourning." Just awful.

A better name might be Sympathy Sweet or Peace Pie. Too close to peace pipe? Nevermind.

BILLYE'S 'FUNERAL' PIE

1 (15 ounce) can crushed pineapple, with juice
1 (8 ounce) carton sour cream
1 (3 ounce) box coconut cream pudding mix
1 (8 ounce) graham cracker crust
1. Mix the undrained pineapple, pudding mix and sour cream together, and pour into crust. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Note: Can be topped with whipped cream and chopped nuts, if desired.

Now, as I'm back on Dubya Dubya, I calculated that this ENTIRE pie would be 51 points. A serving size (1/8 of the pie) would be 6.4 points -- which I would totally round down to just 6, as it's not 6.5.

If you want to take a little of the point wallop out of this recipe, you can use non-fat sour cream and fresh pineapple, and it cuts down to 4.6 points per slice, or 37 for a whole pie. Just FYI.

Do you have a funeral pie/cake recipe? Let's see it!

Peace, love and sympathy sweets ... XOXO

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Living Wright

While other kids were watching "The Smurfs," Scene Writer Jason Ashley Wright was tuned in to "Style with Elsa Klensch." By fourth grade, he knew he wanted to write, and spent almost three years publishing a weekly teen-oriented magazine, Teen-Zine -- circulation: 2. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi, he became the medical reporter and teen board coordinator for the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American, a Gannett newspaper. Eight months later, with visions of Elsa dancing in his head, he applied for the fashion writer position at the Tulsa World, where he began working on Aug. 3, 1998. He is now a general assignment reporter for Scene.

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2/5/2013		Jason Ashley Wright: Another suicide shocks, for now
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