Coconut Cream Pie
I made a coconut cream pie this weekend and decided to do a few things differently: First, I put about 1/2 a tbsp of sugar in the crust. I have typical made an all butter crust that is just flour, butter, salt, and water. I’ve always gotten a nice flaky crust from the recipe, but one thing that bothered me is that I felt like the crust didn’t brown evenly. I didn’t want the crust to taste sweet so I had avoided adding sugar. When I made my peach galette, I used a crust recipe that included sugar and it did brown a bit better, so I added some sugar to promote browning but not so much that it made the crust taste sweet. Second, I used a spatula to fold in the water instead of my hands. Finally, I worked the butter into the flour more than I usually do.
The result of these efforts was a less flaky crust and some crust shrinkage. You can see in the pictures below, the May pie, which was a very flaky crust method, is very flaky! If you look closely, you can see the layers. In the Fair (August) pie, you can see the crust looks almost puffy. The October pie crust is almost deflated and so much shrinkage that you can see the edge of the pan! The problem with making several changes at once is that I’m not sure what caused the issues. I suspect that I needed to rest the dough for longer in the fridge once I had rolled it and put it in the tin. The lack of flakiness is a headscratcher. While I did incorporate the butter a little more than usual, I don’t think it was that much. I don’t know if the sugar or the folding method had an impact, but I may experiment more with the sugar in the crust. But also, I feel like a lesson here is that pie dough is fickle.
All of that said, I think this is one of the best coconut cream pies I’ve made. Even though the crust texture wasn’t my favorite, the taste was still incredible! I really don’t think you can beat a homemade crust.
I have a big pie month coming up. My plan is four pies for Thanksgiving and I’ll doing some baking for donation pies. I’m looking forward to sharing all of that baking!