Let me start by saying that I idolize Rebecca Rather, The Pastry Queen. I’m lucky that I to live close enough to Fredericksburg that I can visit the Rather Sweet Bakery on occasion and especially lucky that I get to go to cooking classes that she teaches at Central Market. My friends all make fun of me for stalking Rebecca, but I try to control it as to not get authorities and restraining orders involved.
That being said, since Rebecca shares her fabulous recipes in classes and cookbooks, one of her cakes is a typical birthday cake for family members. As I was making her German Chocolate Almond Cake, I had the thought that the coconut cream filling and frosting would make a good filling for a coconut cream pie. Bolstered with new found confidence to experiment and tweak recipes, I decided to create my own version of a coconut cream.
I made a double batch of coconut cream filling from the cake recipe with a couple of changes, my coconut was toasted---brilliant!, I know, and I didn’t put in the almonds. I made a crust out of shortbread cookies and macadamia nuts, pressed it into a pie pan and filled it with the cooled custard filling. I had some left over so I put it in some ramikens and chilled everything. I decided I’d taste the filling. WHOA! Frosting Pie!
Now you may think you love frosting and can eat it straight. But try a nice big ol’ pie wedge of frosting. No beuno!
So the next day I scrapped all the frosting out of the pie shell and went about changing it from frosting pie to something that would be edible. I managed to cut the sweet with whipped up,(unsweetened) cream cheese and found the right propotions so you couldn’t identify cream cheese and balanced out the extreme sweetness of frosting. I even went to the bar and cracked the seal on my Trader Vic’s Macadamia Nut liqueur and added that to the pie filling to give it a nice undertone. I crushed up some more shortbread cookies, chopped up some toasted macadamia nuts and topped the pie. Added some sweetened whipped cream decoratively piped on top and even made a nest with whole macadamia nuts in it sprinkled with toasted coconut since it was Easter.
Now that pie---damn it was good!
