Coconut Cream Pie (with Shredded Coconut Crust)
Coconut Cream Pie is already epically amazing. What better way to kick it up than make the crust out of coconut!! Coconut all the things!
Servings 8
Equipment
- Pie Plate
Ingredients
Coconut Crust
- 2 1/2 cups Shredded Coconut
- 5-6 tablespoons Coconut Oil melted
Filling
- 3 cups Coconut Milk
- 2 each Egg Yolks
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 1/3 cup Corn Starch
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 tablespoons Coconut Rum optional, but not really
- 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil
- 1 1/2 cups Shredded Coconut
Topping
- Heavy Cream whipped, with coconut extract
- Cool Whip optional instead of cream
Instructions
Crust
- Heat the oven to 325. Get the coconut in a bowl and mix it with the melted coconut oil.
- You're looking for the coconut to feel moist to the point where it should lightly clump together - just like grahams when you make a graham cracker crust.
- Once it's ready, start pressing the coconut in. Work it all the way around, pushing it into every edge and spreading it around making it even with no lumps.
- Once you worked the coconut into the pie dish, pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the coconut is browned. Keep an eye on it!
- Now that the pie dish is out of the oven, set it aside and let I cool while you work on the custard.
Custard
- Take everything minus the last 2 ingredients - coconut milk, egg yolks, sugar, corn starch, vanilla extract, rum - and put them into a cold pan. Whisk it all up until you see a nice smooth liquid with no lumps or clumps or flumps. Sorry, I read too much Dr. Seuss.
- Put the pan on medium heat and keep watching and stirring until it heats up and starts to simmer. Constant vigilance! You don’t want it burning. Once it simmers, you should go from liquid to custard! It's magic in a pan!
- Take it off the heat and add the last 2 ingredients – the coconut oil and the shredded coconut. Stir them in and your custard is done.
- Go ahead and pour it in the pie dish and make sure it’s smoothed out properly. And this is where I regretted not going all the way up with the coconut.
- Pop the dish in the fridge for a few hours until it sets. Once it does, plop your whipped cream on top.
- Then take about a half a cup of shredded coconut and toast it in the oven on 400 for a few minutes. Once you see it turning brown, give it a stir and put it back in. More brown, stir, and back in, until most of it is a nice golden color.
- Then just sprinkle on top of the cream and you are done!
Notes
- I used a 9 inch pie dish and it was the perfect size.
- 2 - 13.5 ounce cans of coconut milk is what I used.
- To melt the coconut oil, I just put it in the microwave for a few seconds. It really is just like butter if you've never used it.When I made this, I used 1 1/2 cups of coconut milk and 1 1/2 cups of half & half. Even with all this coconut, I feel like there could've been more coconut flavor, so I omitted the half & half here and replaced it with more coconut milk.
- Pertaining to the crust and browning: I’ve done this twice. Once I let it go till the edges got brown, then I put foil on them till the rest got brown. Sadly, my mom called for camera taking tips for her trip to Puerto Rico and I kinda sorta forgot I left it in the oven. But let me tell you, toasted coconut smells fantastic! The second time I put the foil on first thing. And when I started noticed browning on the bottom, I took the foil off. There were a few uneven spots when all was said and done but for the most part I was happy with it. So either route you go I’m sure you’ll be fine.
- I channeled my inner Puerto Rican and threw in some coconut rum. If you haven't noticed, I'm going all in on this coconut thing.
- Again, fresh whipped cream is preferred but if you too have a shortage, cool whip will work.
- AS A LAST RESORT. I cannot stand that oil based goop. But you do you.
- If you need a recipe for whipped cream, I just so happened to have one right here.
- Go ahead and check it out, I point out my issues with cool whip. Also, it's one of my first posts! It REALLY needs updated pictures.
- If you didn't catch it the first time, I've never made coconut cream pie before. To my surprise, it's insanely easy. Nothing really to it at all. Don't believe me? Well the proof, as they say, is in the custard....
