Purple Rain Pie| Recipe
A coconut taro pie
Thanksgiving is never complete without that warm baked pie and a side of vanilla ice cream to wrap that family dinner up with. Apples pie, peaches pie, pecan pie, you named it, even a sweet potato pie, but here is another pie flavor, taro pie. This pie will not only surprises all the guests, but will soon become a yearly requested tradition.
Here is the printable link to the recipe.
What do I need? (makes one 9”pie)
Filling
- ~1.5 lbs of taro, diced into ½” cubes
- 3/4 cup of white sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1–14oz can coconut milk
- 3 eggs
- 1 pinch of salt
- 4 tbsp of flour
Pie Crust
- 1 ½ cup of sweetened coconut flakes
- 3 tbsp of butter, melted
- 1 tsp of vanilla extract
Topping (optional)
- ½ cup of sweetened coconut flakes
- ¼ cup of thinly sliced almonds
- Pre-made whipped cream (or you can make your own)
How to?
Put all the diced taro cubes into a pot. Fill the pot with enough water to cover all of the taro cubes. Bring the water to a boil. Cook the taro cubes until it is translucent and a knife can easily break it aparts, about 15–20 minutes.
While waiting for the taro cubes to cook, make the pie crust. Preheat oven to 325̇⁰F. Into a mixing bowl, add the coconut flakes, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Mix well and pour into a 9” pie dish. Press firmly and evenly distribute the mixture onto the bottom of the pie dish.
Bake the crust at 325̇⁰F for 25–30minutes or until golden brown. Once baked, remove and set it aside.
Drain cooked taro and discard the starchy water. Put into a bowl and mash it up well with a potato masher. Add in the sugar and vanilla extract. Keep on mashing until everything is well mashed up. There should still be some chunks left, which is fine. Those chunks will give a nice bite to the pie. For smoother light taro pie, check out the Tips and Tricks section below.
Once all the taro cubes are mash, add in the coconut milk and eggs. Mix up really well, then add in the salt and flour. Mix up until the batter is smooth.
Pour the taro filling mixture into the pie. Increase the oven temperature to 350⁰F. Once the oven is preheated to 350 ⁰F, bake the pie for 45 min — 1hr. The pie is cooked when the middle no longer jiggles.
Remove the pie and let it cool at room temperature. This is the hard part, but trust me the cooling step is important for that whipped cream topping.
While waiting for the pie to cool, toast the ½ cup of sweetened coconut flakes in a non-stick pan. To do this, put the coconut flakes into a nonstick pan and cook it under medium heat. The key is to constantly stir the coconut flakes to evenly distribute the heat and get that nice golden toasted color.
Top the pie with thinly sliced almonds and toasted coconut flakes. Using a star piping tip, cover the edges of the pie with whipped cream like the image above. For pre-made whipped can inside of a can (example, Reddi Whipped), no need to use the star piping tip.
Tips and Tricks (Advice :P)
For those who doesn’t know how to clean up taro
Remove the skin with a peeler or use a sharp knife. Then dice into 1" cubes. I would recommend using sharp knife. However, this waste more taro than using a peeler, but it is a little safer. While handling taro, I would recommend that you don’t get your hands wet. If your hands are wet, taro can get very slippy to deal with. In addition, working with taro with wet hand can make your hand itchy. Not sure whether I am just allergic to it, but this is what my grandma taught me and trust me it does get itchy.
The secret to a fluffy, creamy, and best of all smooth pie
The secret to make a fluffy, creamy, and smooth taro pie is to put all the filling ingredients into a blender and blend it up. I have tried this and the pie turned out very light, fluffy, and creamy. This technique definitely save time as you don’t have to sit there and smash the taro until smooth.
Why taro and not ube?
The reason I used taro instead of ube was because Vietnamese coconut taro dessert called Chè Khoai Môn is one of my favorite dish. This is a sweet dessert dish made of sticky rice and chunks of cooked taro topped with coconut cream. Sometimes, it also comes with tapioca balls stuffed with taro filling. However, ube would works for this recipe as well. Give it a try if you can find fresh ube around your grocery store and leave me a comment down below.
So…what are the differences between ube and taro?
Ube is purple yam and taro is a root that has a light purple color, more of a lavender purple color. Ube has a very dark purple color and tarol color is more of a like pale purple. Ube is often used in filipino desserts and Taro is more commonly used in Chinese and Vietnamese savory and sweet dishes. Both taro and ube have different texture and flavor. Ube has more of a nutty flavor while taro has more of a starchy flavor. If you ever goes out and get a purple yam dessert, it is more likely that ube was used to make that dessert.
Taro root can be found in small and large sizes. The small ones have less of a purple color and are often used in hot pot. Large taro has a stronger purple color. Taro leaves if you are curious are also edible. They are use as a wrap similar to corn husk. One famous dim sum dish that used taro leaves are known as Lo Mai Gai, a chinese sticky rice dish stuffed with mushroom, pork, sausage, eggs, etc…wrapped inside of a taro leaf.
Apparently, there is also another type of purple yam/root. It is known as Okinawan sweet potato, often used in Japanese cuisine. Here a a very interesting article that talks about each type of purple yam/root.
Can I used a different pie crust?
Feel free to use any pie crust of your choice. This coconut pie taste really good with pre-made pie crust. My favorite one are Trader Joe’s pie crust. I have also tried this recipe with a graham cracker crust and it turns out really good.
Education Time
Pie originated from the idea of making a container for savory meat dishes. Thus the originally, pie crusts are not edible, but are made to be used as baking and serving containers for savory meat dishes. They are made solely to hold up the fillings during several hours of baking.
Pies existed in America even before the settlers came over. Pie was an English specialty as proven by the English meat pies: Shepherd’s pie and cottage pie. Both are very similar pies and are topped with potatoes. One the differences are that Shepherd pie is made of lamb while cottage pie is made of beef.
Around the mid 1600s, the Pilgrims started adding berries and fruits, ingredients that the Native Americans showed them, in their pies. These colonist started to use round pans to save time and stretch the ingredients, thus led to the birth of the baked shallow pies, which is similar to modern day pies.
Fun Facts 😮
- The first pies were savory meat pies, not sweet ones.
- There are three different types of pie, filled pie, top-crust pie, and two-crust pie. Can you guess the differences based on the name? Filled pie is when the pie crust is at the bottom and the filling is placed on top. A top-crust is a pie where the filling is at the bottom and the the pie crust is on top. A two-crust pie has a pie crust on both the bottom and top of the filling.
- According to wikipedia, the Ancient Greeks are the one who made the first pie pastry.
- Pies come in all sort of flavors and fillings. There are meat pies, pot pies, and fruit pies.
