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Baking Expert
Catherine Christiansen
Decadent Cream Pies
This month brings three scrumptious pie-in-the-face pies; the kind most clowns would be happy to receive. What’s more fun than sinking into the coolness of coconut cream, reveling in peanut butter or banana cream, or zinging your taste buds with luscious lemon meringue? Each one is a fluffy pleasure, perfect served chilled on a sultry summer evening.
The fillings have been tweaked to obtain the maximum flavor with downy whipped cream or meringue dolling them up with seasonal white flounces. (For perfect stiff peaks, look for the mixture to rise to the occasion—and stay that way—when the beaters are lifted out.)
Coconut cream pie was Gilligan’s favorite and this recipe would do Mary Ann proud. Both shredded coconut and light coconut milk infuse the rich custard, while the whipped cream topping gets a shower of golden-sweet toasted coconut. Framing it all is a crust of dark chocolate cookie crumbs, adding texture and contrast.
The second recipe offers the option of going nuts or bananas. Either way, the crust is lined with decadent chocolate ganache offering a splendid base for the plush filling. Your choice of creamy peanut butter with salted peanuts or scads of sliced fresh bananas take basic vanilla custard into supercalifragalistic territory. As with the coconut cream, cooking the filling until it is good and thick is one key; another is letting it rest in the fridge for a bit to allow it to truly set up.
To finish, a lemon meringue pie that should have your tongue doing the merengue. The lemon juice and zest are pushed to the max, with just enough sugar to bump up the thrill. Using a super clean and cold bowl and beaters is the name of the game for whipping the whites. Keeping a close eye on the meringue while it’s baking is also encouraged. Take it all the way to lovely, dark golden brown for superior flavor and texture.
Note: If you don’t have a microplane zester to use on lemons, I’d suggest you splurge for your kit. It’s a great tool to use on citrus, ginger, spices and a gajillion other aromatic ingredients.
Fluffy
Coconut
Cream Pie
recipe
Black Bottom
Banana Pie
recipe
Black Bottom
Peanut Butter Pie
recipe
Mac-Daddy Elvis Pie (Black Bottom Peanut Butter-Banana Cream Pie)
recipe
Zesty
Lemon Meringue Pie
recipe
Read more about Catherine Christiansen.
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