>> Hilah: Howdy doodies!
I am Hilah, and today on Hilah Cooking we are going to do a really easy, kind of almost
foolproof, coconut cream pie.
I’ve been teasing this on my Instagram feed for a little while, and I’ve been perfecting
it, so I am really excited to share this with you today.
For some reason coconut cream pie is really popular in the South, and it’s just really
great.
If you love coconut, you will love this pie.
[MUSIC]
[Coconut Cream Pie Recipe]
>> Hilah: First we’ve got to pre-bake our pie.
I’ve got a pie crust here that I made yesterday, and I actually used coconut fat instead of
butter just to like bump up the coconut flavor.
We’re going to fully bake this crust as opposed to a partial bake like with a pecan
pie or a pumpkin pie, so first I am going to poke some holes in the bottom.
That’s just to let some steam out to keep it from, keep the bottom from puffing up so
much, and then I’ve got here a piece of foil with just some dried beans in it, and
this is our little weight, so just sort of lightly press the foil down along the bottom
and spread your beans out evenly, and this is going to kind of hold it down to keep it
from bubbling up, and we’re just going to bake it at 425 for about 15 minutes.
While our crust is baking we can go ahead and toast up some coconut.
I’ve just got the coconut in a dry skillet.
You can use sweetened or unsweetened flakes.
I am using a mixture of both because that’s what I had, so I am just going to cook this
over a kind of a medium high heat for a couple of minutes, stir it pretty frequently until
you start to see some little golden brown flecks popping up.
All right, so you’ll see here just like almost overnight or instantaneously like,
it’ll go from white to this blonde, beige color, so we can turn the heat off and set
that aside, and the timer actually just went off for the pie crust so I am going to get
that out of the oven and we’re going to put a little egg glaze on it real quick.
All right, so our pie crust is baked for 15 minutes so I am gonna put out the foil, careful
because it’s hot, and you can reuse the foil and the beans as many times as you want.
Uh oh, bean overboard.
I don’t think you could cook them after you’ve baked them, but whatever.
Now I’ve got of my four eggs for the filling, I am just going to separate one of them over
here and use the white and save the yolk to go in the filling, and I am just gonna loosen
it up a little bit, and then just brush all over the crust with this egg white, and what
this is gonna do is number one is seal it sort of so that when we put the filling in
later and then put it in the fridge, the crust isn't absorbed, all the liquid from the filling
and get soggy, and it’s also going to add a nice, lovely, golden color to the edges,
so make sure that you get all the way up the sides, and then go ahead and get this little
top bit, and it’ll be real nice and pretty later.
Okay, I got it coated well.
I’m gonna to put it back in the oven for about five minutes just to let it set to cook
the egg and actually set that coating, and I’ll be back in five.
We can start putting together our filling and first I’ve got some corn starch and
sugar here, so I just wanna get these a little combined just to get any lumps out of the
corn starch, just give it a wee whisking, and then we’re going to add some half and
half, it’s not like a low fat pie by any means, but we are going to use low fat coconut
milk.
This dissolved, and then the coconut milk, and I do not have my stove on yet.
I am gonna make sure that all of our corn starch is dissolved in the cold liquids before
we turn any heat on it, and then we’re going to add some eggs, so I’ve got still here,
I’ve got the egg yolk from, that I separated already.
Then we use the white for the crusts, so I’ve got three more whole eggs I am going to add
to that, and you’ll see a lot of recipes that just call for egg yolks in the filling,
but if you have the whites in there they’ll help it set, and you won’t worry about having
a soupy pie, so I am just gonna beat these up really, really well.
A blender would work well for this too just to make sure that the whites are super-incorporated
before I add it to the other mixture.
Okay, so like 30 seconds of vigorous whisking, so I can go ahead and add it to the coconut
milk mix.
Okay, this looks great, and now my crust is just about done so I am going to go ahead
and get that out and set it aside before we actually put any heat on this business.
Put the heat on it.
Okay, crust, set it aside.
I am gonna turn on my heat to about medium and just whisk it.
I am going to just keep moving it for about five minutes or so until you’ll start to
see some bubbles come up.
So, I said bubbling, I meant steaming.
After about five minutes, it’ll start to steam, and that’s when we want to turn it
down to low and then cook it for another five minutes so you could see it’s already starting
to thicken up quite a bit, so just keep stirring it and it’s gonna, you know, help prevent
any lumps, and I will show you what it looks like when it’s thick enough ,but we are
well on our way.
Okay, so just about five minutes it has gotten really nice and thick kind of like when we
made the banana pudding.
When you scoop up some with your whisk, see how it kind of like fills the wires of the
whisk there, it clings to that, so you can turn the heat off, and now we can pour it
into our shell, and I put about half of our toasted coconut into the bottom of the shell
here.
We are going to save the other half to put on top and just pour in our hot liquid.
Awesome!
And now, I am going to just cover it with saran wrap.
This is gonna keep it from getting that little skin on the top, although that doesn't really
matter because we are gonna cover it with whipped cream later, but whatever do it if
you want to.
So, the key is just to make sure that it’s actually touching the surface of the pudding,
and I like to keep the crust out from under there because we don’t want that to sit
in there and steam and steam that crust and make it soggy, so just sort of fold it in
so it’s not covering the crust, just covering the filling, and we’ll put it in the fridge
for about four hours until it’s completely cooled and set, and I have one already ready
for you and for me.
Okay, so here is my fully set pie.
You can see how totally firm that center is, so that’s gonna be really great for slicing,
it’s not gonna fall apart on us, and I have just got some whipped cream.
This is just some heavy cream that I beat with a whisk attachment for about five minutes
until it was nice and stiff, and put a little bit of sugar in there, so sort of start around
the edges and just smooth it as evenly as you can.
It doesn't have to be perfect at all, and just seal up around all the edges.
I do recommend doing the whipped cream part right before you start it, but you can make
the pie up to a couple of days in advance as long as you keep it refrigerated.
Okay, yay!
Okay, I won’t lick my finger on camera.
That’s tacky.
Okay, and then I’ve got the rest of our toasted coconut, so we’re just going to
sprinkle that on top, and if you hate coconut too, you can totally do something like this
just like a vanilla cream and use more half and half in place of the coconut milk.
That looks just pretty as a picture, pretty as a picture of a pie, right?
Okay, I am gonna try to cut it.
Dare I?
Let’s see what the hell happens.
Okay.
I don’t know what I’m so nervous about.
It’s gonna be perfect.
[pause] Oh, boy!
Dudes, look at that cream deliciousness.
Wow!
Oh my God!
I am stoked about this, and look at that in there.
I don’t know if you can see it, but it’s a really flaky crust dudes.
Okay.
Here we go.
[pause] Mmmmmm hmmmm mmmmm mmmmmm mmmm hmmm mmm hhhmm mmm hmm.
This is my pie dance.
That is a good pie dudes.
I mean seriously if you love coconut, you will love this pie.
It’s so creamy.
It’s got such a great coconut flavor all throughout, and then with the crunchy little
bits of toasted coconut on top it’s just flavor sensation if I do say so.
So, I think this would be a great dessert for any kind of like, Christmas, or whatever
because it looks like, you know, an iceberg or a snow drift in a pie crust, very wintery,
very celebratory, so I hope you try it.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.
I’ll get to them as soon as I can.
Thank you so much for watching and have a wonderful day.
Bye!