Put the lime in the coconut... or better yet, CHOCOLATE

After reading my previous posts, Kimmers put in a request for her own pie. And as BFF I felt obligated was happy to make her one especially seeing how she's making me dinner tonight. I think it's a fair deal. So immediately after reading her comment about wanting a coconut pie (I love coconut by the way) I started searching for some sort of coconut pie - and not the run of the mill coconut cream pie that's basically pudding in a pie shell. And out comes Coconut (Haupia) and Chocolate pie (see the originally recipe HERE)...

Ingredients the recipe calls for along with what I used (because I never do what I'm supposed to!):

• 9" unbaked pie shell
• 1 cup milk
• 14oz can coconut milk (I used 14oz of original Coconut Dream because I got it free from work and figured why not?)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 7/8 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chips and I didn't measure them out so I'm not even really sure how much, haha)
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream (we'll get to this later)
• 1/4 cup white sugar (and we'll get to this later too)

 STEP ONE: bake the pie crust. If you're cool like me you'll buy the ready-made, rolled up and refrigerated pie crusts. So step one involves unrolling the pie crust into a pie pan and throwing it in the oven at 350 degrees for approximately 15 minutes but really until it's golden brown. Important note: DON'T FORGET IT IN THE OVEN WHILE DOING THE OTHER STUFF! I've done that, it didn't pan out very well.

While the pie shell is baking, move on to STEP TWO: prepare the pie filling. "Whisk together" the milk, coconut milk, and 1 cup of sugar in a medium saucepan (I don't really know what a medium saucepan is so I used a "pot" like the one below). Bring the mixture to a boil (which means waiting, waiting, and waiting...). I got a little nervous just letting a coconut and sugar mixture sit on the stove to boil considering I've had bad experiences with sugar on the stove so I kept stirring it (I think this was somewhat counterproductive to the whole bring to boil but it eventually happened). While waiting for the inevitable boiling process to being, dissolve the cornstarch in the water (key note: it takes some stirring to dissolve!)

contrary to popular belief, just pouring the water on the cornstarch does not lead to it dissolving - mix this! haha,

wait for it... wait for it...

Look! It's almost boiling!!!

Once the mixture is boiling, it's time for it to simmer. While it's simmering, SLOWLY pour in the cornstarch mixture while constantly mixing. Again, simmer isn't really in my vocabulary and I rarely follow directions to a "t" so naturally I turned down the heat and DUMPED in the cornstarch mixture. Word to the wise: pouring out of bowls should be done carefully to avoid this situation which lead to the smell of burnt cornstarch...

it's not your eyes, it's a little blurry :(

stirring the thick gooey coconut goo (see the pretty orange nails??)

It's supposed to take about 3 minutes for the mixture to thicken but mine literally turned gelatinous the second the cornstarch hit the coconut mixture. Woohoo! I saved time! But I continued to stir it over low heat for 3 to 4 minutes simply because I had to melt the chocolate chips in the microwave. I know, crazy! Who decided melting chocolate in the microwave was a good idea??? Well it is. This is where I figured that I probably had more chocolate chips than needed seeing how the recipe said one minute to melt and it took me more than two.

milk chocolate is waaaay better than semisweet... and yes, at some point it was necessary to make coffee

Once the chocolate chips are melted, the recipe calls for splitting the coconut goo in half. Half gets mixed in with the new chocolate goo to form a coconut chocolately goo

And because you already know this (I've said it at least twice already!), I don't follow directions. Not only did I not use actual coconut milk but Coconut Dream instead, I also decided that it's necessary to have ACTUAL COCONUT in a coconut pie so I added coconut flakes... to everything!

Now it's time to assemble the pie. First, pour the chocolatey coconut goo in the bottom of the pie shell, followed by a layer of the coconut goo on top. This is also another point where I realized that I had too much of something seeing how my pie filling could've filled another pie! (But that would've required baking another pie shell!)

Now, let's talk about the heavy cream and the rest of the sugar: I didn't use it. I have a few reasons for this but the one I'm sticking with: there's nooooo room for a whipped topping on my pie. I have to transport this pie about an hour away so I'm not really keen on having a mile high pie being tossed around my car. But if you've read my previous post about "whipping until stiff peaks form" then you're probably fully aware of the fact that whipped toppings are not my specialty and didn't exactly turn out the way it should've. (I still stick with the "where would the whipped topping go??" excuse.) So to make it pretty I added more coconut flakes (because you can NEVER have too many! and chocolate chips (of the dark chocolate persuasion because I used up all the milk chocolate IN the pie.

yes, that's Mickey Mouse in chocolate chips

 

FINAL STEP: Refrigerate the pie. I think it said chill it for about an hour but mine will be chilling until I leave to visit my bff for dinner.

To be quite honest, I'm not very confident in this pie. The coconut filling doesn't look as scrumptious as one would hope. It actually kind of looks like glue. I guess we'll find out tonight...