Best coconut cream pie ever!

Ok so it sounds like I have had a massive ego attack-but it was actually the comment of a friend who had this pie the first time I made it. Could it be due to her pregnancy that she exclaimed that when she tasted it? Well, make it yourself and you be the judge!

I used the Bette Hagman Dream Pastry recipe for the crust, I used Spectrum Organic Shortening (which is Palm Oil and is non-hydrogenated) for the Crisco since I cannot have corn oil:

Dry ingredients:

1/2 cup tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup potato starch (katakuriko in Japanese stores - this is NOT the same as potato flour)
1 cup sweet rice flour (mochiko flour - not the same as white rice flour)
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Shortening:
1/2 cup gluten free Spectrum Organic Shortening
1/2 cup butter

Liquid ingredients:

1 egg
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 Tablespoon ice water

wax paper
sweet rice flour to sprinkle on the wax paper
lots of sugar for sprinkling on the top of the pie

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix them thoroughly with a fork. If you own a sifter, you could sift them together, but it is not necessary. Grate in the butter and margarine using a large cheese grater. Mix the dry ingredients and the shortenings up with a fork until the pieces of butter are distributed evenly - you don’t need to get the pieces of butter as small as they would be in a wheat crust. The size of “lima beans” may be a little large, but don’t go smaller than kidney beans! Anyway, mix up the liquid ingredients until well combined, then pour them in to the dry ingredients and mix together. Squish the dough into a ball and wrap it up to store in the refrigerator for one hour. (For the record, we have made this crust in the winter and gone straight to rolling it out, without refrigerating it. You wouldn’t do this when the air is warm in the summer, but it is ok to do this in the winter when it is cold.)

Divide the dough in half.

To roll out this crust, spread out a piece of wax paper, dust it with sweet rice flour or GF flour mix, or whatever comes handy, put one piece of the dough on top, sprinkle with more flour, spread another piece of wax paper on top of the dough, and roll out with a rolling pin. * The dough is now contained between two sheets of wax paper. Peel off the top piece of wax paper, flip the crust on top of the pie plate, adjust it to fit the dish and remove the other piece of wax paper. Your counter is clean, and your pie crust did not fall to pieces when you tried to put it in the pie dish! You rock!

Fill your pie, then repeat the pie crust rolling maneuver for the top crust. Cut pretty holes in the top crust before transfering it to the pie, if you wish. After putting the top crust on the pie, sprinkle the top crust liberally with sugar - maybe 2 - 4 Tablespoons! Cut steam vent holes in the crust, if you forgot to do it before, and then bake the pie. This crust gets nice and brown and crispy, and it has a delicious buttery flavor! You bake it as you would any other pie crust (about 50 minutes at 400 degrees, for a two-crust fruit pie.)

I adapted the pastry cream from my Totally Pies Cookbook (ISBN: 978-0890878842):

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons Pamela's All Purpose GF Baking Mix

2 tablespoons potato starch (NOT potato FLOUR)-you can use cornstarch if you are ok with corn

2 eggs

3 cups milk (I used 2%)

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla (make sure its GF)

Mix together the sugar, Pamela's, potato or corn starch and eggs in a bowl with a fork. Pour the milk into a large, heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil. Gradually ladle half of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the milk-and-egg mixture back into the saucepan. Cook, whisking constantly, over medium heat until it is bubbly and thick (should be about 5 minutes). Remove the mixture from the heat, add vanilla extract and continue whisking for about 5 minutes until it starts to cool down. Cool the mixture slightly, pour into a bowl, cover the top of the bowl with plastic (do not touch the surface of the cream) and store in the fridge.

I added toasted sweetened coconut to the Pastry cream prior to chilling it for an extra coco-nutty taste.

For the pie:

2 cups shredded sweetened coconut (dry toast for an extra dimension of flavor)

1 recipe Pastry Cream (above)

1 GF Dream Pastry pie crust

1 cup heavy cream, cold

1/2 confectioners sugar (Wholesome Sweeteners makes one with tapioca starch if you avoid corn)

Fold 1 1/2 cups of coconut into the warm pastry cream. Pour into cooled pie shell and smooth top. Chill for about 2 hours. Whip heavy cream until soft peaks form when you lift the mixer. Add sugar and beat until it thickens. Spread over coconut cream and sprinkle the top with the remaining toasted coconut. Serve or store in fridge.