Monday Menu ~ Coconut Cream Pie

I just finished reading a very interesting book.  A book about pie and grief.  It's written by a gal who went to college here in Olympia with a gal I work with, who happens to be another pie enthusiast.  The basic story is about someone working hard at a dot com job, very unhappily, who quits to make pie.  She baked pies in Malibu for famous people, she did pie-mazing things!  On the day she was to sign her divorce papers, her husband dies of a sudden heart issue.  Overwhelmed with guilt and grief, she meanders her way through her grief by baking pie.  She now lives in Iowa, in the famous American Gothic House (picture the famous painting of a somber man and woman with the pitchfork standing in front of a white farmhouse).  She lives there, runs a pie stand and teaches pie baking.  The book itself I found so-so.  Hard to read about grief absent of true Peace.  That aside, I loved the pie stories.  I also find baking so therapeutic, so relaxing, so calming.  That part I related to, and I always love stories about people who find one thing to do well and passionately.

At the end of the book, she includes a pie recipe for the pie that won 1st place at a county fair in Iowa.  If any pie can win anything in the state of Iowa, it must be a grand pie! (I tweaked a couple things to fit what I had and because I can't seem to help myself.)

So last night I baked my first ever Coconut Cream Pie.  Oh, sweet mercy.  I felt a little tear come to my eye, it was that good.  I wanted everyone to taste it, yet I didn't want to share it.  Amazing.  Divine.  Scrumptious.  Any other high praise I could mutter would be appropriate for this pie.  Do not be intimidated to make this beautiful pie!  It is easy, easy.

I blind baked a pie shell for the first time, too.  Mostly successfully.  I cannot recommend this pie enough.  Make your favorite pie crust and blind bake it to start.  If you don't have a favorite pie crust, search for one and find a favorite.  Use butter.  At least half butter, half shortening.  But butter.  Preferably all butter.  But I'm a little butter-biased.

Coconut Cream Pie

pudding filling:
1/2 cup sugar
3 TBSP cornstarch
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
4 egg yolks (reserve whites for meringue)
1 cup coconut
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp coconut extract
1 TBSP butter

In a sauce pan, combine sugar and cornstarch.  Stir in the heavy cream, milk and egg yolks.  Cook over stove, on medium heat, until thick and almost to a boil, whisking frequently.  Stir in coconut.  Remove from heat and add vanilla, coconut extract and butter.  Pour into your pre-baked shell, then prepare meringue.

meringue:
4 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1 TBSP cornstarch.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then add sugar and cornstarch.  Spoon meringue on top of warm pudding filling, make it all swirly and pretty.  Sprinkle some coconut on top (I forgot this extra coconut!)  Bake at 350 until meringue turns golden brown, 10-15 minutes.

Let it cool and set.  Well, that's getting a bit technical.  We ate this when it was still a bit warm.  Warm coconut pudding?  Yes, please.  It might slide around a bit if you cut into it while it's warm, but the taste is worth it.

Yeah, how  could you not want a piece of that??