Categories
Recipes

Quick & Easy Frozen Coconut Cream Pie

I’ve often been disappointed with coconut cream pies I’ve had at restaurants or purchased from a store. They just weren’t coconutty enough for me. That’s why I developed this Quick & Easy Frozen Coconut Cream Pie. If you are looking for a strong coconut flavor in your coconut cream pie, I discovered that adding coconut milk powder to the recipe does the trick without adding too much moisture. You can find it at any Asian market, as well as online. I’ve linked to some options below the recipe.

Quick & Easy Frozen Coconut Cream Pie

NOTE: Although you can keep this pie in the refrigerator, it loses its shape quickly. So store it in the freezer, but defrost for about 15 minutes before serving.

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 oz.) package cream cheese
  • 1 Tablespoon sugar
  • 2 Tablespoons coconut milk powder
  • 1/2 cup evaporated milk
  • 1-1/3 cups coconut flakes
  • 1 (8 oz.) container frozen non-dairy whipped topping, thawed*
  • 1 fully cooked pie crust

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until soft.
  2. Beat in sugar and coconut powder.
  3. Gradually add milk, beating until smooth.
  4. Fold in coconut and whipped topping.
  5. Spoon into crust and freeze until firm — at least four hours.
  6. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving.
  7. Store any leftovers in the freezer.

* If you’d rather not used whipped topping, you can use real whipped cream. Simply beat some heavy whipping cream in a cold bowl until stiff peaks form, and use that instead.

This recipe was excerpted from Your Perfect Pie.

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Categories
Recipes

Quick & Easy Coconut Cream & Chocolate Pie

coconutThis recipe is inspired by one of my favorites from Your Perfect Pie.

Although you can keep it in the refrigerator, it loses its shape quickly. So store it in the freezer, but defrost for about 15 minutes before serving.

Ingredients

1 (3 oz.) pkg cream cheese
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp coconut milk powder
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1-1/3 cups coconut
1 (8 oz.) frozen non-dairy whipped topping, thawed
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1 chocolate cookie pie crust

Directions

In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until soft. Beat in sugar and coconut powder. Gradually add milk, beating until smooth.

Fold in coconut and whipped topping. Fold in chocolate chips.

Spoon into crust and freeze until firm — at least four hours.

Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. Store any leftovers in the freezer.

Coconut Ingredients Available on Amazon.com




 

Create Your Own Unique Pie!

Your Perfect Pie by Carma SpenceDoes pie making daunt you? Are you wary of deviating from any pie-recipe you find, for fear that you’ll ruin the flavor of the resulting pie?

It doesn’t have to be that way!

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Welcome to Carma's Cookery's Pie-Palooza 2017 - A month of pie legend, lore and love

Miss previous posts? Find links to them here.

Categories
Taste Tests

Taste Test: Nutiva O’Coconut

Click on image to view larger
Click on image to view larger
Nutiva, a brand of coconut, chia, hemp and red palm organic superfoods, recently launched bite-sized snacks called O’CoconutTM. Because I love coconut, I gratefully accepted a free sample to review for this site.

They arrived while I was on vacation, so I’m not sure how long they sat at my front door, but when I opened the package, everything looked fine … just slightly flattened.

What I liked about O’Coconut:
These snacks are made from organic, fair trade coconut and have only 60 calories per snack. They are lightly sweet, so they don’t overpower your palate.

I was sent samples of both the Classic and Hemp & Chia snacks. The classic was just that — it tasted like a less-sweet macaroon. The Hemp & Chia is where the flavor got interesting. The press material described the flavor as “nutty” — but my experience was closer to blue cheese.

I know, weird, huh? I checked the ingredients … nothing in there that should taste like cheese, blue or otherwise. So take that comment with a grain of salt.

I enjoyed both of them and was happy they sent be two of each!

What I didn’t like about O’Coconut:
They’re so small! They truly are bite sized! I wonder if they’d consider making a larger, say 100-calorie, version?

My recommendation:
I enjoyed them. They both had a slightly unconventional flavor that I appreciated. I also like that they are made with organic ingredients, which is important for many consumers, and that the coconut is fair trade, which means that the coconut is grown sustainably with an eye toward being better stewards of the land. Fair trade also means that standards are in place to protect human rights and deal fairly with workers and their families. All good in my book.

So, yes, I’d recommend these handy little snacks. You can find them at Whole Foods Market locations, as well as at Nutiva.com and Amazon.com.

Categories
Food Fiction & Essays

A few of my favorite foods

gula melaka
Photo by Vernon Chan via Flickr
The other day I received a package filled with yummy-looking gluten-free pasta dishes to review of this blog. And I’ll be reviewing them over the coming weeks. But that got me to thinking of all the foods I truly love … foods that make me almost wax poetic with colorful adjectives describing how nearly orgasmically delicious they are. So I thought I’d share that list with you … and I’d LOVE to hear what’s on your list!

Pesto with Spinach and Feta Cheese
I was first introduced to pesto when I was 16. I thought the name was so funny. But once I tasted it I wondered why hadn’t Mom made this before! The garlic … yum! The smoothiness of the virgin olive oil … mmmm. And just a touch of crunch from pine nuts. I’m in heaven. Then, in my 20s I decided to experiment and added some spinach and feta cheese to the mix. Ah! Perfection. The tartness of the feta mixes nicely with the bitter of the spinach and the awesomeness of the pesto. I get chills just thinking of it.

The Chorizo Potato Burrito
When I first lived in Phoenix (I’ve lived there two separate times), I lived walking distance from a little shack-like Mexican restaurant called Eriberto’s. For breakfast, the served this burrito, which also had some eggs. It was DA BOMB! It was so good, I would beg my husband to take me there so I could have one … no matter what time of day it was! Later, I’d buy chorizo and some form of potato product (hash browns, fries or even tater tots) and make my own tortilla-less version. I’ve been to many Mexican take out places since, but found none that mix those three ingredients with the panache that Eriberto’s does. I miss you!

Categories
Taste Tests

Product Review: Banquet Dessert Bakes, Coconut Creme Pie

Banquet Dessert Bakes
Product image from Banquet Dessert Bakes
Banquet Dessert Bakes is a line of simple, make it yourself with a few extra ingredients dessert mixes. I recently tried their Coconut Creme Pie. Here are my observations:

Prep Time
It took very little time to prepare the dessert. I probably completed the whole process, including cleaning up in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Crust
All you had to do to create the crust was add water. However, what resulted was a chewy crust that stuck to the pie tin and made it very difficult to serve decent looking pie slices. It tasted fine, but I would recommed either experimenting with adding less water than the box suggests or just using a ready-made crust.

Filling
Now, to be upfront, I love coconut. I want my coconut-flavored foods to be rich in coconut flavor, which is why I ended up using coconut powder in the coconut cream pie I developed. To my surprise, Banquet’s coconut creme filling did not disappoint. It had a rich, creamy and very coconutty flavor, with little bits of coconut mixed in.

The box recommends that you refrigerate 30 minutes before serving. I would recommend that you give it closer to an hour to allow the filling to fully set.

Overall
I’ve give this dessert 4 out of 5 stars. It tasted great, but the crust needs work.

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