You know the thing they say about falling in true love? That is feels like the first time, like nothing that’s 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 point—and there had been only a few, to be honest—had disappointed with its too-sweet starchiness, its artificial extracts, its crappy cream topping. But when I took a job at abakery in Chicago, I finally came face to face with the real deal, an instant classic: theDovima With Elephantsof 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 I’d later apply to other cream pies, likethis Martha Stewart pumpkin cream, which is delicious in its original iteration butdefinitely not unimprovable.Butterscotch cream pietakes well to this secret technique; so does coconut cream, a recipe for which you’ll find below.
The secret? Well, it’s cream. The trick is the manner in which it’s incorporated: You make the standardcreme patisseriethat characterizes many pie fillings—my coconut iteration features a duo of whole milk and coconut milk—but then, after the filling has cooled, fold inmoreheavy cream—this 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 … more, somehow? So the straight-up whole milk I’d 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 cream—and approaches, I think, perfection. It asks for a few more steps than usual, and takes a little while, though much of that is downtime—make this on a hot summer weekend afternoon and sip iced tea on the sofa between steps. What you’ll end up with is a pie that anybody would be proud to bring home and introduce to their folks.
