Chocolate Banana Coconut Cream Pie with Macadamia Crust

Ingre­di­ents

• Pas­try Crust
• 8 oz. (1 cup) unsalted butter–cut into 1 inch chunks and chilled in the freezer for at least 30 minutes
• 11.5 ounces (2 1/4 cups) all pur­pose flour
• 2 1/2 oz. (3/4 cup) sweet­ened, shred­ded coconut
• 1 1/2 oz (1/3 cup) macadamia nuts
• 1 Table­spoon gran­u­lated sugar
• 1/2 tea­spoon kosher salt (1/4 tea­spoon if using table salt)
• 10–12 Table­spoons ice water
• Choco­late Layer
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 8 oz. 60% bit­ter­sweet chocolate
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter–softened
• Coconut Cream Layer
• 1 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 cup unsweet­ened coconut milk
• 2/3 cup gran­u­lated sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• pinch of kosher salt
• 4 Table­spoons unsalted butter–softened
• 1 Table­spoon vanilla bean paste
• 2/3 cup whip­ping cream
• 1 1/2 cup sweet­ened shred­ded coconut

Instruc­tions

Pas­try Crust
1. Begin by putting the flour, coconut, macadamia nuts, sugar, and salt into the bowl of an 11 cup food processor.
2. Pulse these ingre­di­ents for 30 sec­onds or so until fairly evenly chopped. You’ll still have some notice­able bits (1/8 inch or so) of macadamia nuts. This is good. They make the crust super pretty.
3. Next, add all the frozen but­ter bits and pulse another 20 sec­onds or so.
4. Now, you’ll be adding the water. This step varies with the dif­fer­ences in humid­ity, and the brand of flour and but­ter used. You are look­ing for a dough that is not form­ing a ball in your proces­sor bowl. The mix­ture will look slightly crumbly still, but when a small hand­ful is com­pressed in your fist, will hold together almost with­out crum­bling. Pas­try that is either too wet, or too dry, will result in seri­ous frus­tra­tion when rolling out. Know­ing when it is right is a mat­ter of practice.
5. When dough is com­bined prop­erly, remove it from the bowl onto a piece of plas­tic wrap. Using the wrap to help you, gather the dough (which looks quite crumbly as it comes out of the bowl) together into a cohe­sive mass. don’t over work.
6. Divide the dough into two equal pieces. Wrap sep­a­rately in plas­tic wrap, shap­ing into a flat­tened disc about 1 inch deep. Bring the edges in as best you can as this will make rolling out so much easier.
7. Chill for 30 min­utes. If you chill longer at this point, you will need to let the dough sit at room tem­per­a­ture for 30 min­utes to slightly soften. The goal is a tasty but beau­ti­ful crust. I’m just try­ing to help you out here.
8. Using a lightly floured sur­face, or even bet­ter, a pas­try cloth, roll out each dough disc into a 12–13 inch cir­cle that is evenly about a scant 1/8th inch thick.
9. Care­fully place the rolled out dough into the pie dish, cen­ter­ing it the best you can. Do not let the dough stretch while you drape and shape it into the dish.
10. trim the over­hang­ing dough to an inch over the edge of the pie dish. Fold this extra dough under­neath itself, let­ting it stand up against the edge of the dish, essen­tially extend­ing the depth of the crust another half inch. Using your knuck­les or fin­ger­tips, flute the edge of the crust to make it pretty.
11. Cover pie dish with plas­tic wrap and chill in the refrig­er­a­tor for sev­eral hours before bak­ing. This will help to pre­vent shrinking.
12. Cut a piece of parch­ment 5 inches larger than the diam­e­ter of the pie dish. Lay it care­fully into the dish, shap­ing it against the sides of the dish. fill the dish with pinto beans. This will also help keep the pie from shrink­ing and bubbling.
13. Place the pie shield over the crust edges.
14. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 20 min­utes. Remove the parch­ment and beans, but leave the crust shield on.
15. Bake another 10–12 min­utes until the bot­tom of the crust starts to speckle brown.
16. Let crusts com­pletely cool before filling.
Choco­late Layer
17. Whip the heavy cream to a firm peak and set aside.
18. In a medium stain­less or glass heat-proof bowl, melt the bit­ter­sweet choco­late while set over a very low sim­mer­ing pot of water. Stir it fre­quently to avoid hot spots. (this approx­i­mates a dou­ble boiler)
19. Set choco­late aside to cool to room temperature.
20. In a medium stain­less or glass heat-proof bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together well. Set over a small saucepan with an inch of sim­mer­ing water in the bot­tom. Make sure the bot­tom of the bowl is a cou­ple of inches above the sim­mer­ing water. (this approx­i­mates a dou­ble boiler)
21. Whisk egg mix­ture con­tin­u­ously until it reaches a tem­per­a­ture of 160 degrees F. This will cook the eggs to a safe tem­per­a­ture. It should take 7–10 min­utes for this to be reached. Be sure you are whisk­ing the whole time.
22. Once eggs reach 160 degrees F., take off the heat and whisk until the tem­per­a­ture of the eggs comes down to about 90 degrees F.
23. Add the choco­late to the egg mix­ture and whisk well. If it doesn’t seem to be incor­po­rat­ing very well, place it back over the sim­mer­ing water and whisk until nice and smooth. It shouldn’t need to get very hot to do this.
24. Add vanilla and set bowl aside to cool back down to 90 degrees F.
25. In a seper­ate mix­ing bowl, beat the soft­ened but­ter until fluffy. Slowly add the cooled choco­late mix­ture to the whipped but­ter and mix at medium-high speed for 5–7 min­utes until mix­ture is light and fluffy.
26. Care­fully fold in the whipped cream until no white streaks remain.
27. Place a layer of bananas into the bot­tom of each pie crust.
28. Divide the choco­late fill­ing in half and spread over banana layer.
29. Cover with plas­tic wrap and chill.
Coconut Cream Layer
30. Com­bine eggs, sugar, flour, salt in a medium sized bowl. Whisk well. Set aside.
31. Com­bine milk and coconut milk in a medium sized. heavy pan. Heat on medium until scalding.
32. SLOWLY add a small amount of scalded milk to the egg mix­ture int he bowl, whisk­ing con­stantly. Slowly add the rest of the milk, a lit­tle bit at a time, whisk­ing con­stantly, until all the milk has been added. Return this mix­ture to the milk pan. Cook over medium heat, whisk­ing con­tin­u­ally, until mix­ture just begins to boil and is thickened.
33. Pull off the heat and add the but­ter and vanilla paste. Fold in coconut.
34. Cover with plas­tic wrap, let­ting push­ing the plas­tic down onto the sur­face of the pas­try cream to pre­vent a skin from form­ing. Chill.
35. Whip the 2/3 cup whip­ping cream and fold into coconut pas­try cream to lighten it up.
36. Place another layer of sliced bananas on top of the choco­late layer and divide the coconut pas­try cream between the two pies, spread­ing over the banana layer.
37. Put another layer of bananas over coconut pas­try cream.
38. Whip 3 cups of whip­ping cream and spread over last layer of bananas on both pies.
39. Gar­nish with toasted coconut and shaved chocolate.