Valentine’s Dessert: Coconut Cream Pie with Raspberry Heart AIP

Been on autoimmune paleo for 14 days and suddenly I have to come up with dessert for Valentine’s Day. Yikes!

Enter this Coconut Cream Pie recipe. I modified it slightly to add extra flavor and a pop of color. My annotations are in red.

It is delicious. I admit I missed the whipped cream that accompanies most coconut cream pies, but not much. It’s hard to believe it’s not butter.

Coconut Cream Pie
Author: Breanna from http://www.hewontknowitspaleo.com

Ingredients

For the egg-free honey graham pie crust
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup arrowroot flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp honey
1 gelatin egg
Zest of one lemon

To make gelatin egg:
Whisk 1 tbsp cool water with 1 tbsp gelatin. Add 2 tbsp boiling water. Whisk vigorously until gelatin is completely dissolved and frothy. Use immediately.
I use this gelatin , and if you do too, be prepared for it to smell like an old man’s boot after he’s been pig farming all day. Just hold your nose and plow on (heh).

For the Coconut Cream Pie Filling:
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (toasted on baking sheet for in 350 oven for 5-6 minutes, or until golden brown)
2 cans coconut milk
1/2 cup arrowroot flour
1/3 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Directions
For the egg-free honey graham pie crust:
Preheat oven to 350.
In small bowl, whisk together dry ingredients: coconut flour, arrowroot four, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and lemon zest. Set aside.
In stand mixer, beat wet ingredients together on medium.
Add dry ingredients, mixing until fully combined.
Scrape dough into 9″ pie plate. Place a piece of parchment paper (large enough to cover entire pie plate) over the crust. Using small hand-held rolling pin (or use a small drinking glass turned on its side), roll crust flat to cover the bottom and sides of the pie plate.This was when I realized that every glass I own is of the Goblet of Fire size, so I used the parchment paper and my dainty fingers to massage the dough flat on the bottom and up the sides.

The dough will thicken as the gelatin sets, so this may take some extra rolling compared to an egg-based crust.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. While crust is baking, toast coconut and prepare pie filling.
For the coconut cream pie filling:
Toast coconut on a baking sheet for 5-6 minutes, until golden brown (Do not skip this step. Without it, the pie will be colorless and semi-translucent. It also adds great toasty flavor!)
In medium saucepan over medium heat, Whisk all ingredients together, except toasted coconut.
Bring to a boil, uncovered and stirring frequently while scraping bottom and sides.
Once boiling, boil for 1 minute. Mixture will thicken considerably.
Stir in coconut.
Pour into prepared graham pie crust.

To add raspberry, do this now*
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Refrigerate for 4 hours, until completely cool and hardened throughout.
Recipe by He Won’t Know It’s Paleo at http://hewontknowitspaleo.com/coconut-cream-pie/

For the raspberry sauce, you’ll need:
1/2 cup raspberries
Juice of half a lemon
1 tablespoon of honey
Half of a gelatin egg (see above)

Put lemon juice and honey over low heat until honey melts. Add raspberries and mash them until broken down. Remove from heat and sieve mixture.
Put this into a dropper/syringe/squirt bottle or other tool that allows you to add one drop at a time to the top.
Once the coconut mix is in its shell, starting at the outer edge, drop the raspberry in a concentric circular patterns around the pie, getting smaller as you reach the middle. To make it more interesting, run a knife’s point through the middle of the drops. If you didn’t add the toasted coconut, this would make clear heart shapes. However, those chunks are going to interrupt your flow (you feel me, Baby?!) so do the best you can. When you get to the middle circle, also run your sharp knife through its center points. When you have done this, you should have a heart–in more ways than one.