Welcome to Clubhouse Eats, where we celebrate the game’s most delectable food and drink. Hope you brought your appetites.
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If you’ve ever been to Firestone Country Club, we hope you had the intuition — or were otherwise explicitly instructed — to order the Crunchy Cream Pie while you were there. The dessert has amassed a cult-like fan club of professional golfers over the years, including notable major champions such as Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw, and Jack Nicklaus.
According to Firestone’s longstanding member services manager, Dick Robbins, the Golden Bear always took two or three pies home with him after a visit to the club. In fact, several years ago, Nicklaus once sent a private jet to Akron to pick up 30 Crunchy Cream Pies for a special dinner that he was hosting at his own club in Muirfield Village.
“It was like what we call an icebox pie,” says Crenshaw, a native Texan who remembers first visiting Firestone Country Club (and likely eating the pie) in 1974. “God, it was good.” Yes, Crenshaw acknowledges that he’s a man with a sweet tooth, though he’s quick to add, “I don’t completely wear it out.” Nevertheless, he remembers the generous servings of Crunchy Cream Pie at Firestone and the simple fact that whenever he ordered a slice, “I just couldn’t leave anything left on the plate.”
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Proof that sometimes the simplest things in life are best, the Crunchy Cream Pie is straightforward. Essentially, it’s a vanilla custard pie topped with whipped cream and a crunchy topping comprised of toasted coconut, crumbled pie crust, chopped nuts, cinnamon, and sugar. The pie’s backstory is no less humble. During the early 1970s, Victor Pallotta, then Firestone’s resident baker, was searching for ways to use the extra custard that remained after he finished making batches of his sought-after eclairs. But he stopped searching once he concocted this pie.
“It was one of those things that we rolled out to the members, and it just took off right away,” says Robbins. “The next thing you knew, he was making more crunchy cream pies than anything else. It was just the right concoction that everyone loved.”
After returning from a visit to Firestone a couple of years ago — where more than one slice of pie was ordered and enjoyed — I reached out to the club to see if they would share the pie’s recipe, only to be told that it’s not for public knowledge. A quick Google search, however, brought me to a story published by a local Cleveland news station in 2018, one that went inside the Firestone kitchen and documented one of the club’s chefs making the dessert. With that video tutorial (and a printed copy of the news station’s acquired recipe in hand), I set out to give it my best shot and was encouraged by the results. The recipe is spot-on for flavor. My only miscue was not letting the custard simmer long enough on the stovetop — it wasn’t quite as firm when chilled in the crust — but that’s a blunder that’s easily corrected the second time around.
It’s unclear if in the subsequent years after that news story was published the club changed its protocol about sharing the pie’s recipe. All I know is that the recipe that once was shared is alive and well out on the World Wide Web. Here, we share the recipe first published by Cleveland 19 News. Happy baking — and God bless the Internet!
Custard Ingredients:
3 cups half-and-half or whole milk
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp vanilla extract
Dash of salt
1 baked graham cracker pie crust
6 oz. whipped cream (you can’t go wrong with Alton Brown’s recipe)
Topping Ingredients:
1 cup toasted coconut
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup chopped pecans** toasted
1 store-bought, flour-based piecrust, baked and chopped fine
Ground cinnamon, to taste
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*For toasted coconut, spread 1 cup of unsweetened coconut flakes evenly onto a baking sheet, and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
*For toasted pecans, add nuts to a medium skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring often until slightly darker in color and fragrant (about 10 minutes).
**It’s worth noting that Robbins specified that the topping mixture features toasted peanuts; however, both the published recipe and the video segment that aired on Cleveland 19 calls for pecans.
Preparation:
In a medium bowl, combine 1/2 cup of sugar and the cornstarch and mix well.
Add the eggs, vanilla extract, and a dash of salt and blend until smooth.
In a medium saucepan, combine half-and-half and 1/2 cup of sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Add the egg mixture to the saucepan and whisk until the mixture is thick and begins to bubble.
Remove from the heat and stir in the butter.
Pour directly into a graham cracker pie crust and refrigerate for at least six hours.
While pie is chilling, combine all topping ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well (cover until ready to use).
When pie has fully set, top it with the whipped cream and cover it with a generous layer of the topping mixture. (You may have some extra topping left over.)
