Recipes Discovered

Triple Coconut Cream Pie Recipe

As I mentioned in a previous post, Seth and I had a chance to eat at Tom Douglas’ restaurant, Dahlia Lounge, in Seattle where we had an incredible dinner that ended with Triple Coconut Cream Pie. It’s called Triple Coconut Cream Pie because the crust is a coconut pastry shell filled with coconut cream and then topped with even more coconut. The pie is simple divine. I bought Tom Douglas’ book, Seattle Kitchen, so I could attempt to make the pie myself. Most of my family likes coconut, so I made it for one of our Thanksgiving desserts. This post will be long since there are a lot of details to making the pie, so I will just say now that everyone loved the pie. My family even asked me to make it again for Christmas! It does take a bit of time so make, but it’s definitely worth the effort. >>

I thought the pie would be difficult to make. After all, it is a recipe from a professional chef, and it takes up four pages of the book. Tom Douglas does an excellent job at giving clear directions and tips though, so it make the preparation a lot easier. One of his tips is that the pie doesn’t have to be made in one day. I actually rolled the crust out on Tuesday, made the filling and baked the crust on Wednesday, and then assembled the whole thing Thursday morning. It worked out really well, and that way, I could still do the work in advance but still have a fresh pie on Thanksgiving.

To make the coconut shell, I added flour, coconut, sugar, and salt to my stand mixer (I don’t have a food processor). I mixed that together, and then added cubed butter that I had in the freezer for about 15 minutes. The cold butter keeps the pastry shell flaky. Once the mixture looked like coarse crumbs, I added ice water, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough was just moist, but not wet. I ended up adding about three tablespoons of water. Once the dough was moist, I turned it out onto plastic wrap, formed it into a disc, wrapped it tightly in the wrap, and then let is rest in the refrigerator for an hour. Once it had rested, I rolled the dough out on a floured counter top to about a 13-inch circle, and then carefully transferred the dough to my pie dish. The easier way I found to do this is to roll the dough onto my rolling pin and then unroll it over the pie dish. The recipe is very specific to not stretch the dough because it will shrink when baked. Once the dough was fitted to the pie dish, I trimmed the edges, folded them under the pie dish, and then fluted them. This supposedly helps keep the shell from shrinking as well, but I just found it complicated. Plus, it made the edges of the pie shell burn so I would probably skip folding the edges under and just flute them next time. At this point, I wrapped the pie shell in plastic wrap and put it in the frig overnight. The next day, I put a piece of parchment paper in the shell and then filled it with dried beans. This prevents the shell from puffing up while baking. I only baked the shell for about 12 minutes with the beans in and then another 5 minutes after removing the beans. Like I said before, I think folding the edges of the shell under caused them the burn, but I broke the burnt pieces off the the pie still looked good. I let the shell cool and then once again wrapped it in plastic wrap. After I baked the pie shell, I toasted some unsweetened coconut chips that I found in the natural food store. I only toasted the chips for 2 minutes until it was golden brown, definitely not the 7 or 8 minutes the recipe called for. Be careful not to burn them. Once the chips cooled, I put them in a plastic storage bag and saved them for the garnish.

For the coconut cream filling, I combined milk and coconut in a saucepan, and then added the pulp and pod of a vanilla bean. I’ve had a lot of recipes in the past call for vanilla beans, but they are so expensive, I never actually used one. I will honestly say now, I think the vanilla bean makes this filling. It gives it a flavor that an extract can’t do. So while I’m sure the filling can be made without the vanilla bean, it just won’t be quite the same. Anyway, after the milk mixture was heated, I removed it from the heat and set it aside. In another bowl, I whisked together eggs, sugar, and flour, and then tempered the eggs by adding a little of the hot milk to the egg mixture. After the eggs were tempered, I whisked the egg mixture into the milk mixture, and returned the saucepan to the heat. After whisking for several minutes, the mixture began to bubble and become thick. I whisked it for 5 minutes from that point, and then removed it from the heat, whisked in some butter, and removed the vanilla pod. I poured the mixture into a large glass bowl and set it over another bowl filled with ice water. The mixture cooled down quickly, and at that point, I put a piece of plastic wrap directly onto it and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

The morning of Thanksgiving, I poured the chilled coconut cream into the baked pie shell. I then whipped cream, sugar, and vanilla until it formed stiff peaks and spread that over the coconut cream. I only used about half of the whipped cream on the pie. It just seemed like overkill to use it all. To garnish the pie, I sprinkled the top with the toasted coconut chips and then used a vegetable peeler to shave a white chocolate bar over the top. It looked excellent, tasted even better, and was the perfect ending to Thanksgiving dinner.