Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Culinary Tip #7 Lemongrass Lime Coconut Cream Pie with Lime Graham Crust

It was Susana’s birthday on Sunday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSANA!!!!! Business partner extraordinaire and best friend.
Anyway for her birthday, which she reminded me about on a regular basis, she wanted a lemongrass lime coconut cream pie with lime graham crust. Guess what people, you don’t need a recipe to make something that your friend has completely pulled out of her... head... and has to have to make her birthday complete. All right you need one recipe pastry cream, but even then, you are changing it quite a bit.
Pastry cream, the lovely base for cream puffs, éclairs, cream pies, cake layers, and multitudes of other delights, is made of milk or half & half, sugar, cornstarch and eggs with a tad of butter and vanilla in the end. So instead of the dairy use coconut milk, scratch the vanilla and butter and you are ready to go.

2 C coconut milk
¼ C sugar
2 yolks
1 egg
¼ C cornstarch
1/3 C sugar
1 stalk lemongrass (crush with butt of the knife and cut into 2” lengths)
2 ea lime zested (1/2 for crust)
pinch of salt


1 C graham crumbs
½ cup sugar
¼ c melted butter

It’s against my better judgment to write this all down but here you go. Mix crumbs, sugar, zest from one lime, and melted butter together. Press into pie shell and bake at 350 for ten minutes.


Put the coconut milk, ¼ c sugar, lemongrass, and zest from one lime. Steep at low heat for at least 20 min.

In a bowl whisk remaining sugar, eggs, yolk and cornstarch

Strain coconut milk ad whisk hot liquid slowly into egg mixture put it back into saucepan and bring up to simmer to activate the cornstarch. Whisk at first and then switch to high temp spatula. Once it’s thick take off the heat.

Pour over baked crust and chill.

Pipe on some chantilly, make a meringue or eat it just the way it is. Yum!

1 comment:

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