A Different Kind of Recipe for Thanksgiving! Lindsay Rogers

It’s Thanksgiving Day in America, and since Thanksgiving usually involves getting together with loved ones and eating yummy food, we have a tradition of posting a recipe (for food, not glaze!) on Ceramic Arts Network.

Today’s recipe is for Lemon Chess Pie and it comes from Tennessee potter Lindsay Rogers. You can learn Lindsay’s cool stencil technique in this post in the Daily archive. – Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

P.S. For tips on how to blend local and commercial clays as well as instructions for decorating a plate make sure to check out the rest of Lindsay’s article in the July/August 2016 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated.

Lemon Chess Pie

This is one of my favorite recipes from childhood. Perfect in summer and fall, the warm yellow of this pie is as beautiful on the plate as it is delicious!

1 cups sugar

4 tsp cornstarch

1–2 tsp finely grated lemon peel

4 room temperature eggs

1⁄2 cup fresh lemon juice

5 tbsp unsalted butter—melted and cooled to room temperature

1 pie crust

Instructions:

Sift cornstarch and sugar together in a mixing bowl, removing any lumps. Next, stir in the lemon peel and beat in the eggs one at a time. Blend in the lemon juice and butter—the mixture should be somewhat tart. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell and bake for 50–60 minutes, the filling will puff up and the top will turn golden brown. Before removing from the oven, tap the side of pan to make sure it is solid in the center. Wonderful served warm or cool!

Throwing the Plate

After wedging, weigh out 5 pounds of clay and throw your dinner plate to 11 in. (28 cm) in diameter (1). When throwing, leave the bottoms about – inch thick and trim away the excess. This adds a little more labor in recycling the clay, but it helps to keep the plate flatter in drying and allows for a substantial foot that elevates the plate from the tabletop to present food nicely. Once formed, use a wire tool to cut and soften the rims (2).

Preparing the Clay

Once off the wheel, leave your plate in the open air and carefully monitor the drying to avoid having the rim warp or rise up, as a result of a quick dry. If you can, cover them overnight with plastic to let the moisture content even out across the vessel. This process often makes the whole plate reach a perfect leather-hard stage by morning.

Adding Texture

The leather-hard stage is the ideal time to add texture to a plate. To do this, try out a variety of different tools to see what you like (3). In my work, this blanket of texture turns the softness of the wet clay into surface decoration and, ultimately, provides a quiet background for the bold slip decoration to come.

However, having a deeply textured surface on a functional vessel can start to affect its usability. To address this, simply wipe off any clay burrs with your hand and smooth the texture with soft rib (4). This act compresses the clay and makes a nice even surface. If the clay is on the wetter side of leather hard, let the surface dry for a couple hours before softening the texture, to avoid accidentally wiping it away. If you catch it at the right stage, the burrs from the texture should fall off the pot with ease.

**First published in 2016, updated in 2026.