German Chocolate Pie Recipe with Coconut Pie Crust (2024)

FAQs

What is German chocolate pie made of? ›

German chocolate pie is made with many of the same staples as the cake: chocolate, eggs, pecans, and shredded coconut. Instead of making a separate chocolate cake and coconut frosting, the pie combines everything in the filling! There's some sweetened condensed milk and vanilla that help tie it all together.

This can happen for several reasons: if the cooking process was rushed, if the filling wasn't carefully watched and stirred frequently, the filling was overcooked, the stovetop heat was too high, or if the pie isn't given enough time to chill. Any ingredient substitutions could also result in a runny chocolate pie.

Cold Pie + Hot Oven

As a general rule of thumb, it's always best to chill a rolled pie crust either in the freezer for 10-20 minutes or in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to 1 hour before you bake it. While this is an extra step, it makes all the difference in the world.

Runny custard: You may have undercooked your custard. If it fails to thicken after bringing it to a low boil, it can be fixed by stirring in a slurry of equal parts cornstarch and water. Mix the two together and whisk it into the hot custard. Bring to a boil, stirring, until thickened.

Created by Samuel German in 1852, and named after him, it's a sweetened, dark chocolate baking bar. It contains more sugar than its semisweet or bittersweet counterparts, and was developed as a shortcut for bakers that premixed chocolate with sugar.

German chocolate frosting, also known as coconut-pecan frosting, is the perfect icing for a German chocolate cake.

Sprinkle dried breadcrumbs or crushed cornflakes, or other types of cereal, on the bottom crust before filling and baking in the oven.

Some pie recipes thicken the filling with flour; others use cornstarch, while others still rely on tapioca.

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.

Mistake to Avoid No.

Adding more flour is always an option, but add too much flour and your dough will end up like a cracker—not a pie crust. Remember: The more you mix your pie dough, the tougher it becomes. To keep the mixing to a minimum, try rolling out your dough between two pieces of parchment paper.

Should you Prebake pie crust? ›

There are a few instances, actually. You need a par-baked or fully baked crust if you're making quiche, no-bake pie, custard pie, cream pie, pudding pie, or simply want an extra-crisp pie crust. If you're making a pie that doesn't require a baked filling, you still need a baked crust.

#2—Add cold water

Before you start making the dough, fill a glass with ice and water. Add the ice water gradually to the dough, about one tablespoon or so at a time, and stop when the dough is just moist enough to hold together when a handful is squeezed.

Blind Bake Your Crust

Blind baking is a technique that requires partially baking or fully baking a pie crust before adding any filling. This helps your crust bake evenly and prevents you from ending up with a soggy-bottom pie.

It happens to all of us, you patiently wait for your custard to thicken in the fridge only to discover that it hasn't set. But not to worry, you can save it! It's simple actually, all you have to do is reboil the coconut cream filling. To be safe you can add an extra tablespoon of cornstarch as well.

If you don't want to change the coconut-rich flavor, use coconut flour for thickening the same as you would wheat or other flour. Remove some stock from the pot, let it cool, mix into it until you have a slurry, then return the slurry to the pot while constantly stirring and bring to a boil until thickened.

A common misconception is that German Chocolate Cake comes from Germany. In fact, the name comes from American baker, Samuel German, who developed a type of dark baking chocolate in 1852. The baking chocolate was then named Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate in honor of German.

It is sweeter than semi-sweet chocolate and contains a blend of chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, flavorings, and lecithin. Baker's® sells this chocolate which can be found on the baking isle of most grocery stores. The most famous recipe containing German's® Sweet Chocolate is German Chocolate Cake (recipe here).

German's sweet baking chocolate is just that, sweeter baking chocolate— at least, sweeter than both semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate. According to MyRecipes, to substitute semi-sweet chocolate for German's sweet baking chocolate you would need to add an additional 1/2 tablespoon of sugar per ounce of chocolate.