Whip It! Whip It Good!
By CHARLES FERRUZZA
Like my fellow Pitch columnist Alan Scherstuhl, I haunt thrift stores and flea markets looking through — and for — interesting old books. I recently stumbled across a 1950s vintage cookbook and, after I brought the treasure home, a magazine clipping for Prune Whip Pie (pictured) slipped out from between two pages. I’d never heard of the confection and I can’t imagine making it — at least not before I start collecting Social Security and becoming a regular (pun intended) viewer of the Saturday-night Lawrence Welk Show reruns on KCPT-TV. (This week’s guest: Kathy Lennon!)
The last time I saw prune whip in its classic form (a glossy swirl of sticky, dark brown pudding) on the menu of a local restaurant, it was still the 20th century! The timeless Leona Yarbrough’s Restaurant in Shawnee — more than a dining experience, it’s a time warp! — was still serving the constipation-relieving dessert. They don’t anymore.
“We stopped offering that a long time ago,” one of the waitresses recently told me. “Wouldn’t you rather have lemon meringue pie?”
Who wouldn’t?
