This Chocolate Coconut Pie has a toasted coconut pastry crust filled with dark chocolate custard, topped with dalgona coffee swirled with whipped coconut cream! It's toasted coconut meets a mochaccino and I am HERE for it!!
Preheat oven to 375° F. In a medium bowl, combine the flour and vegetable shortening. Using a pastry blender (see note) or fork, cut shortening in until no large pieces remain. Stir in the toasted coconut (see note).
In a small bowl, combine egg, cold water, and vinegar. Whisk to combine.
Make wells in the flour mixture, and pour the egg mixture into the wells. Stir until a soft dough is formed. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly into a ball.
Roll dough to fit your pie plate, ensuring that you don't stretch the dough (as this may cause it to shrink when baked). Line the pie crust will foil and fill with pie weights (see note).
Bake 20 minutes. Remove the foil and pie weights and bake an additional 5-8 minutes, or until the crust looks dry and is barely golden. Allow crust to cool completely on a wire rack.
For Custard:
In a medium saucepan, heat milk to just boiling.
While the milk warms, combine egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl. Whisk until thoroughly combined.
Once the milk is boiling, add about ½ cup of the hot milk in a slow, steady stream to the egg mixture while whisking constantly. This will temper the eggs. Then add the egg mixture to the saucepan with the remaining milk.
Cook mixture over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture is thick. Once the desired thickness is reached, remove from the heat.
Add melted chocolate and mix to combine. Add vanilla extract, chocolate extract (see note), and butter and mix to incorporate.
Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into another bowl to ensure there are no lumps in the custard. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly to the surface of the custard to ensure it doesn't form a skin. Refrigerate until chilled through, at least one hour.
For Dalgona Coffee:
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine all dalgona coffee ingredients. Using the whisk attachment, whip on high speed until the mixture forms soft peaks.
For Coconut Cream:
Scoop just the white, solid portion of the chilled can of coconut milk (or cream) into the bowl of a stand mixer (leaving the clear liquid behind). Using the whisk attachment, beat on high speed until thick.
Sift the powdered sugar into the bowl, and continue whipping on high speed until peaks form. Add vanilla bean paste (see note) and mix to combine. It may take 4-5 minutes for the cream to whip to peaks. If it appears lumpy, add a bit of the clear liquid from the can to help thin it, and just keep beating! A high-quality coconut milk or cream will whip up the best!
Assembly:
Fill cooled pie crust with the chilled dark chocolate custard. Top with the dalgona coffee, then drop spoonfuls of the whipped coconut cream on top and swirl together. I added grated chocolate for garnish. Note that neither the dalgona coffee nor the coconut cream are very stable, so you'll want to make them/top the pie with them as close to serving time as possible!Enjoy!
Notes
Note on desiccated coconut: I used desiccated (dried) coconut, as I didn’t want the texture or the added sweetness of regular sweetened coconut. If you can’t find desiccated coconut, you can find it here.Note on toasting coconut: To toast the coconut, spread it out on a baking sheet and toast at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes. Start checking/stir after two minutes, and check/stir every minute after that. Because the coconut is dried, it toasts up in a flash, so really keep an eye on it!Note on chocolate extract: I highly recommend this (sometimes overlooked) extract! It lends amazing depth of flavor to anything chocolate! If you can’t find it in your local grocery store, you can find some here. Even better, make yourself some Homemade Chocolate Extract for next time!Note on vanilla bean paste: I love the flavor of vanilla bean paste, so I couldn't resist adding some to the whipped coconut cream! If you’d like to get some vanilla bean paste for yourself, you can find some here. If you’d rather substitute, you can use an equal measure of vanilla extract.Note on pastry blender: While a pastry blender isn’t necessary to cut in the shortening, it does make the job a lot faster and easier. If you’re looking to buy one for yourself, you can find one here.Note on pie weights: Pie weights help when blind-baking a crust, keeping the dough from rising/getting bubbles as it bakes. This makes sure that you have the room that you need for filling. You can buy actual pie weights if you’d like (like these here), but I just use black beans. They’re cheap and you can use them over and over again.