70 Years Later, This Is Still the Best Summer Dessert

TOO OFTEN, today, we relegate baking to the cold-weather months. Yet summer brought many a bygone baker inspiration for pies, cakes, cookies and crêpes. 

Bygone baking happens to be a fixation of mine, and I’ve found I’m not alone. The comments section of my TikTok (@bdylanhollis), where I prepare and taste desserts of long ago, brims with viewers’ memories of baking with family, or their recollections of a recipe as a recurring character throughout their lives—for better or worse. I’ve curated and rewritten some of those recipes for a cookbook called “Baking Yesteryear” (July 25, DK), and each one comes with a story.

This certainly applies to the pie I hold above all others for summertime baking. Nearly 70 years after its creation on my island home of Bermuda, Kiskadee Fantasy still commands attention. Its unveiling at the barbecue will bring a swift end to any sense of logic or patience in the serving line. Kiskadee Fantasy is an object of unmatched affection. It is also cheap and dead simple to make. 

For its crust you’ll need no pastry and no graham crackers, either. Bermuda, only 1 mile wide by 21 miles long, has never had the product variety of other nations; everything consumed must be shipped across the Atlantic, at a premium. This situation was even more pronounced in the 1950s, when the Kiskadee Fantasy was born, so plain saltines, crushed fine and held together with melted butter, make up the pie’s shell. The filling, equally economical, consists only of egg whites, vanilla and sugar, whipped to a meringue and baked golden. Next, a layer of canned, crushed pineapple, tucked in with a cozy topping of whipped cream. Nothing much to it, really, apart from that extravagant moniker. 

Kiskadee Fantasy got its name from a bird. Not a bird with a penchant for naming pies, but, rather, the Great Kiskadee, a small songbird with a call as distinctive as its yellow belly. Introduced from Trinidad & Tobago in 1957 to control Bermuda’s lizard population, it caused quite the stir when it flatly refused to eat any and then proliferated to a domineering degree. One point to the lizards. 

Those with an eye for historical pies might note that the Kiskadee Fantasy shares a fair bit with American soda-cracker pies of the 1930s-1950s. These “make-do pies” of crushed soda crackers, sweetened meringue and whipped cream offer a lot from very little.

Years ago, my father taught me to roll the saltine crumbs, to wait patiently for the meringue to cool, to properly drain the pineapple and to let the pie firm up before slicing. All these summers later, this salty-sweet, bright and creamy dessert of the ’50s stands on its own merits—though I certainly can’t claim that my rosy recollection of its preparation and an abiding sense of patriotism have no bearing on my perception of this pie. That’d be nonsense. Because baking is always about so much more than the sum of the ingredients.