Chocolate Castles as wel

Coconut Cream Pie

I know, I know, I kept saying that I was going to post soups everyday. Then yesterday I posted Preacher Cake instead of soup, BUT, because I felt so guilty about not following through with my plan, today I am posting a soup and a dessert. Since we are in the middle of packing and like Abraham, we don’t have a clue where we are ending up, but that does have a ring of excitement to it! After 3 years of living in California where it feels like you are on a continual vacation, we are going to go travel a couple of months visiting family and friends. We hope that after we stay with them a few nights, we can still call them family and friends. Since we are headed to the East Coast, our goal is to eat at Paula Deen’s restaurant and her brother’s place,Bubba’s. That will be a thrill for us both. But before we head out, we are trying to use u everything in our cabinets. Last night a friend of ours, Lorrie, came over to eat dinner with us as her husband was out of town. Randy wanted chile so she brought cornbread. About 4:30 I decided that what we needed was a coconut cream pie. I panicked. There was no whipping cream in my house. That is almost like not having toilet paper. That just is never suppose to be. You can’t have coconut cream pie without whipped cream, but neither of us wanted to go to the store. Since making meringue has always caused a panic attack, I tried to figure out what else I could do, but there was no choice, I had to make meringue. I had a little pep talk with myself and told myself that if it didn’t turn out, I would just dish up the pudding into glasses and tell Randy and Lorrie we were having coconut cream trifle with shortbread cookies crumbled up between the layers.

I got out 4 eggs and separated them. Since I had 3 egg whites already in the fridge, I got those out also. Working with 7 egg whites, surely I could make it work this time. I Goggled “how to make meringue” and read step by step how to have it come out successfully. It worked. I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept going to the fridge and opening up the door just to look at it. It turned out so pretty, I didn’t want to cut it. But we did and my goodness, it was so good. Here is the recipe

Coconut Cream Pie

3 cups milk

1 cup sugar

4 egg yolks

1/3 cup plus 2 tables all purpose flour

1/2 teas salt

1 teas vanilla

1 cup shredded coconut

2 tables butter

Whisk all ingredients except vanilla, butter and coconut,  together in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until thick . When pudding is thick, remove from heat and add vanilla, butter and coconut. Stir until butter is melted and it is mixed well. Pour into a baked pie shell (it doesn’t have to cool before pouring pudding in) and cover with meringue. Be sure that the meringue covers all the hot pudding mixture, right up to the edge. Bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. I sprinkled more coconut over the top before baking. Cool completely before cutting.

Meringue

4-5 egg whites at room temp

2/3 cup sugar

1 teas vanilla

Beat egg whites until they begin to thicken. Adding the sugar gradually, continuing to beat while adding, to be sure sugar is completely dissolved. Beat in vanilla and beat until peaks form and hold their shape. Spoon over hot pudding mixture. (The instructions said to even make the meringue before you make the pudding because it will do better the hotter the filling is when you spoon it on). It did work so much better doing that.