The
photo of triple coconut cream pie on Smitten Kitchen easily grabbed my heart. After I read the description of the pie - "a mile high with equal parts gooey, vanilla-flecked, rum-kissed coconut custard and massive pom-poms of whipped cream, topped off with a shower of toasted coconut flakes and curls of white chocolate," I immediately started thinking what excuse I could provide to J to get his approval to create the pie. Sooner I knew J's parents were going to visit us. That was a perfect excuse.
I changed several parts of the recipe. For the crust, I replaced sweetened shredded coconut with unsweetened organic fine coconut powder. For filing, I replaced sweetened shredded coconut with shredded fresh coconut that I kept in freezer, and replaced granulated sugar with Splenda and reduced the amount by a couple of tablespoons.
For topping, I replaced unsweetened large-flake coconut with fresh coconut and skipped white chocolate, which unfortunately I didn't have.
The result was wonderful! The whole pie had only about half a tablespoon of granulated sugar in the crust part. Splenda worked very well in custard and whipped cream. The pie was very coconut-y. I loved vanilla beans in the cream. It was more rustic than
one from Cook's Illustrated. I like both. Nobody minds having more than one recipe for coconut cream pie, right?
