This weekend was the Canada Day long weekend and barbeque invites abound during these 3 days every year. I believe that whenever you're invited to someone else's house for dinner or for an event, you should always bring something to show your gratitude; whether that be flowers, wine, or a dessert. I almost always bring a dessert because I love to bake and was very pleased this weekend when I was invited to a friend's family barbeque/housewarming. I haven't been baking a lot in the past few weeks and so I wanted to pull out all the stops and make my "infamous" (amongst my mother, sister, step-father, and boyfriend to be specifiic haha) coconut cream pie.
Now, if you are a novice baker but also are not very confident in your abilities-I wouldn't make this pie. I do think that being a good baker means having a good solid base in baking before moving to more difficult recipes but at the same time, baking a more difficult dish doesn't require any more skill than an easier dish, it just has more steps. The only way you can be a good baker is just by following the directions *exactly*, and this skill works just as well if you're making cookies, or if you're making a pie. I am going to add as many directions and tips as I can to help reduce any sort of ambiguity in the recipe and to make it as clear cut as possible. I hope many of you attempt this, even if you haven't baked very much! It is such a delicious pie and very worth the trouble.
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Okay so the first thing you need to have with a pie recipe is a solid pie crust recipe. I haven't experimented very much with pie crust recipes because the first one I ever used turned out so well, and has always turned out so well, that I never went to look for another one. There is some debate over using a shortening based crust over a butter based crust and I'm sure there are some merits to both, but I use a butter based crust because I have never had problems with it.
Ingredients:
-1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 tsp salt
-8 tbsp cold, unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
-3 tbsp. ice water, plus more if necessary (I would say that this is the average amount of ice water I would use year round. In Canada during the winter the air can be so dry that I end up using sometimes at least 5 tbsp. of ice water and in the summer sometimes I use 1-2 tbsp. So depending on your environment, start with 1 tbsp. and keep gradually adding water until you can tell that you don't need anymore, I will explain later on how you can tell)
Directions:
1. Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor, pulse once or twice. Add the butter and process until mixture looks like cornmeal-about 10 seconds.
(mixture should look like this)
2. Place the mixture in a bowl and sprinkle 1 tbsp. of ice water over it. Gradually gather mixture into a ball, keep adding ice water until the mixture holds together well and isn't crumbling apart. Do not add so much water that it becomes so sticky that it is unmanageable, if you do this just add some flour until it is less sticky. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap, flatten into a disc, and freeze for 10 minutes (or refridgerate for 30 minutes). You can refridgerate it for 1-2 days and freeze it indefinitely.
3. Unwrap the dough and place it on a lightly floured work surface; sprinkle its top with flour and rub some flour onto your rolling pin (if you don't have a rolling pin, you can use a clean wine bottle). If the dough is hard, let it rest for a few minutes.
4. Roll with light pressure from the centre out (if the dough seems very sticky at first, add flour liberally; if it only becomes sticky after rolling it for a few minutes, return it to the fridge for 10 minutes). Continue rolling and adding flour when needed until dough is about 10 inches in diameter (or depending on how large your pie plate is, take the plate and place it face down over your rolled out dough and there should be about 2-3 inches of pie dough around your pie plate).
5. Move the dough to a pie plate by draping it over the rolling pin. When the dough is in the pie plate, press the dough into the bottoms and sides. Trim the excess dough to about a 1/2 inch around and then tuck it under itself around the edge of the plate. If some areas are uneven, you can always use the left over pie dough from trimming the edges to press into spaces where there isn't enough pie dough. Pie dough is very malleable and it doesn't have to look perfect initially, you can always move it around to make it more even. Decorate the edges by pressing a fork over it or by pinching it with your fingers. Freeze for 10 minutes (or refridgerate it for 30 minutes).
6. When you're ready to bake, prick the base all over with a fork.
Now onto prebaking the pie crust. We do this for recipes like coconut cream pie or any other custard-based pie because the actual filling doesn't need to be put into the oven, but the crust itself does need to be baked. The problem with doing this is that with a fruit pie, the fruit will weigh down the crust in the oven and keep it from puffing up. To prevent the puffing up from happening when you prebake the crust, you can either purchase some pie weights (they're generally around $10) or use dried beans or a tight-fitting sauce pan. The directions follow:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Tear off a piece of aluminum foil large enough to fit over the entire crust when folded in half. Smear butter on one side of the folded piece of aluminum foil, then press it into the crust. Weigh the foil with a pile of dried beans or rice, pie weights, or a tight-fitting skillet or saucepan.
3. Bake 12 minutes. Remove from the oven, reduce the heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and carefully remove the weight and foil.
4. Bake another 10-15 minutes, or until the crust is brown. Remove and cool on a rack.
Just a note about prebaking the pie crust: sometimes crusts can be finicky. It has happened to me more than once that after I bake the pie without the pie weights, the crust has still puffed up in some places because the weight was not evenly distributed enough or it did not spend enough time baking with the weights on. This is fine. May be it wouldn't be fine if you were selling the pie in a bakery, but for casual purposes such as for a dessert or for a party, you can just pop any of the crust "bubbles" with the tip of a sharp knife and they will deflate even more when you pour the filling onto it.
Ingredients:
-3/4 cup of sugar
-2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
-1 cup whole milk (if you don't have whole milk and have skim milk or any other lower-fat milk, you can use the same amount but add 1 tbsp. of butter. If you have a higher fat milk, like 5% cream, this is fine. I'm not sure if this rule applies for creams like whipping cream or heavy cream but a 5% cream has worked for me, so it should be okay)
-1/4 cup cornstarch
-5 egg yolks
-1/4 teaspoon of salt
-1 cup flaked, unsweetened coconut
-2 tsp. vanilla extract
-1 tbsp. butter
-1/3 cup toasted coconut
-whipped cream, for garnish
Directions:
1. In a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine sugar, coconut milk, and 1/2 cup of milk on medium-high heat. Heat until you can see small bubbles around the edges of the mixture, it's almost frothy looking, and this is called scalding milk. Remove from heat
2. Meanwhile, in a small mixing bowl, combine the remaining 1/2 cup of milk and cornstarch to make something called a slurry. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks and salt. From the saucepan, take 1/2 cup of the scalded milk mixture and add it to the bowl that contains the egg yolks and whisk together well.
3. Add yolk mixture and the slurry into the scalded milk mixture in the saucepan and whisk over medium-high heat until thickened. This is the tricky part. Reading a lot of the comments on the original recipe page, this is the part that people had the hardest time with. The mixture should be as thick as a pudding, not just slightly thickened and should have large boiling bubbles like this:
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This is where the sort of intuitive, not so cut and dry aspect of baking can at times come into play. It takes me me about 5 minutes for the mixture to get to this point, and then you want to keep it boiling like this for about 2 minutes. However long it takes you to get there, it doesn't matter, just make sure that it does and that when it does you boil it there for 2 minutes. Otherwise it's never going to set. A lot of the commenters mistakenly thought that these types of recipes do the majority of their thickening and setting in the fridge over night when it cools. This is a big mistake. The point of refridgerating is just to cool it, not to thicken it. Anyway, let's get back to the recipe, shall we?
4. Remove from heat and add the non-toasted coconut, vanilla, and butter. Whisk until uniform.
5. Pour the filling into the prepared pie shell. Cover the pie with plastic wrap and press the plastic into the custard mixture and place in the refridgerator. Chill the pie completely, about 2 hours.
(The filling should be as thick as this when it is poured into the pie shell, and not be, as some commenters on the original Food Network Recipe page called it, "coconut soup")
6. During this time, to toast the coconut for the garnish, heat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread the coconut as a single layer onto a baking sheet. Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes, stirring the coconut every 5 minutes, until it is brown.
7. Top the pie with toasted coconut and whipped cream and serve!
Enjoy!
Sorry for the very long post, but I love baking and I think that if you have the time and patience, everyone can be a great baker. I hope that my many pointers helped some of you out and may be made your pie-making experience more successful! If you have anymore questions please feel free to leave them in the comment section.
(Nutritional Information: It doesn't matter :) Enjoy yourself!)
