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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Toasted Coconut Banana Cream Pie

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For Ryan's birthday dessert, I gave him several options of things I could make and this was his top choice. I had seen this recipe on an absolutely drool-worthy blog and was excited to make it. Of course, after reading Emily's instructions, I realized that I didn't have a sieve. Thankfully, Emily was gracious enough to answer a bunch of my questions and the pie ended up being successful. In fact, as I type this, I'm still digesting a piece ;)

I basically followed Emily's recipe (found here), with a few different steps.

Ingredients:
Graham Cracker Crust--
1 1/2 cups graham crackers
1/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons melted butter

3 bananas, peeled and mashed (I used my food processor to mash)
4 egg yolks
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 can of evaporated milk (12 oz)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon coconut extract
2 cups sweetened coconut, toasted

1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
7 tablespoons sugar

1. Prepare the graham cracker crust by mixing crumbs, sugar, and melted butter and pressing into a pie pan. Bake in an oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Allow to cool.
2. To prepare the custard, mix the mashed banana, cornstarch, and egg yolk in a large mixing bowl until well combined.
3. Heat the evaporated milk and sugar in a large saucepan until simmering. (Whisk frequently whilst heating!)
4. Once the milk mixture is at a simmer, pour half of it into the egg mixture and whisk until combined.
5. Pour the egg mixture into the remaining hot milk mixture and continue to whisk until it thickens.
6. Put custard in food processor and process until smooth. Add vanilla and coconut extracts until combined. Add 1 3/4 cups of coconut to mixture (make sure to grind coconut until fine in food processor earlier) and combine.
7. Pour custard into pie crust and refrigerate.
8. Make the whipped cream by mixing the heavy whipping cream and sugar in a chilled mixing bowl for a few minutes until stiff peaks form. Spread onto pie.
9. Top pie with remaining toasted coconut and refrigerate until serving.

**Note: this was much easier to cut and serve in pretty slices after it had refrigerated overnight. The first night it was much runnier and the graham cracker crust was difficult to remove.