You know the thing they say about falling in true love? That is feels like the first time, like nothing thatās ever happened before? Renders you a new person, wiping away prior heartaches and disappointments and orienting you toward a glorious future? I felt that way once, about a banana cream pie.
Every such pie up until that pointāand there had been only a few, to be honestāhad disappointed with its too-sweet starchiness, its artificial extracts, its crappy cream topping. But when I took a job at a bakery in Chicago, I finally came face to face with the real deal, an instant classic: the Dovima With Elephants of pies.
It was an airy, ethereal creation: just a single custard mounded over a pile of bananas in a perfectly crisp pie shell, garnished with white chocolate curls. But in it lay a secret Iād later apply to other cream pies, like this Martha Stewart pumpkin cream, which is delicious in its original iteration but definitely not unimprovable. Butterscotch cream pie takes well to this secret technique; so does coconut cream, a recipe for which youāll find below.
The secret? Well, itās cream. The trick is the manner in which itās incorporated: You make the standard creme patisserie that characterizes many pie fillingsāmy coconut iteration features a duo of whole milk and coconut milkābut then, after the filling has cooled, fold in more heavy creamāthis time cream that's been whipped to medium peaks.
So this was the pie I made for a long time. It took its flavor from the coconut milk in its pastry cream as well as a toasted-coconut garnish, and it never garnered any complaints, including at its most trial-by-fire moment: Christmas supper with a bunch of Southerners.
But then I thought: What about this coconut cream pie but ā¦ more, somehow? So the straight-up whole milk Iād previously used in the filling, I doctored it by steeping toasted coconut in it beforehand. What results is a pie that doubles the flavor of its coconut, doubles the heft of its heavy creamāand approaches, I think, perfection. It asks for a few more steps than usual, and takes a little while, though much of that is downtimeāmake this on a hot summer weekend afternoon and sip iced tea on the sofa between steps. What youāll end up with is a pie that anybody would be proud to bring home and introduce to their folks.
