.coconut cream pie.

For dessert tonight, I whipped together a delicious coconut cream pie. YUM!


You'll want to start out making a single pie crust. Here's how!


Put 1 1/3 c. flour and 1 tsp salt in a bowl. Mix together. Cut in 1/2 cup shortening until it becomes nice and crumbly. Add tablespoonsful of ice water and fluff with a fork until the dough starts pulling together. Form a ball and roll out.

Put in your pie plate. Trim the edges then flute. Prick the crust all over with your fork. You want to create a lot of vent holes otherwise the crust will balloon up when it bakes.

Put in a 425* oven and bake for 10 minutes or until the crust is nice and golden. Pull from oven and allow to cool completely.


While the crust is cooling, make the filling.


In a pot, put 2 3/4 c. milk and 3/4 c. sugar. Put on medium-high heat until it becomes nice and foamy and is almost to a boil. DO NOT LET THIS BOIL! It will curdle your milk. If it boils, dump and start over.







In a side bowl, mix together 1/4 c. milk, 1/3 c. cornstarch, and 4 egg yolks. Whisk well to remove all lumps.

When the milk on the stove is scalding, pour some (about 1 cup) into the cornstarch/yolk bowl and mix while you pour. This is called "tempering". If you added the yolks/cornstarch directly to the hot milk on the stove, it would lump up really bad and the eggs would cook too fast and basically you'd have yummy scrambled eggs in your pie filling. Ick.









Once the yolks are tempered, pour everything back into the big pot and put back on medium high heat. Stir with a whisk constantly while it thickens. Be careful not to let this burn so keep stirring!








Once it's nice and thick like pudding, pull from the heat and add a bunch of coconut, 1 tsp vanilla and 2 Tbsp butter. Stir well.









Put your pot in an ice bath (either a sink filled a few inches up with cold water and ice, or a large bowl filled with some water and ice). This will help cool your filling quickly. Don't let any of the water get inside your pot though. Stir so it doesn't form a skin on top.






Once cool, pour into your cooled pie crust. Cover the top with saran and put in the fridge to chill and set. Just before serving, whip up your cream (2 cups whipped cream, 1/3 c. sugar, 1 tsp vanilla).








Put on top of your pie and then sprinkle the top with toasted coconut.

Voila!



Printable version:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_22ggh3ffhm