Icecream PIECAKEN Fail!

Well, when is a PIECAKEN ever really a Fail?

Last week I saw a pie recipe online like no other. It was a chocolate ganache pie with a shredded coconut crust. For starters, what an excellent idea for a gluten-free crust.  Secondly, dark chocolate ganache in a pie is my kind of pie!  So I thought, "Wouldn't it be a great idea to make a similar pie and put it inside of a fruit-flavoured icecream cake?" 

Well, it was a great idea, but making it happen was a whole other deal.  My original thought was to put the pie inside a lime or raspberry gelato (something tart or sour), which would have paired nicely with a bitter chocolate.  But all I could get at the store here was Strawberry Frozen Yogurt. And I also wanted to change up the original recipe by using a darker 70% chocolate with a butter-based ganache, which is very bitter tasting but delicious. However, once the whole thing was put together, the sweet strawberry ice cream made the dark chocolate pie taste far too bitter.

So what did I do?  I removed all the ice cream, the cookie crust and the chocolate truffle that I used for decorating and made an ultimate bowl of ice cream.  Then I let my wonderful dark chocolate pie come back to room temperature (it was not very tasty while frozen) and enjoyed a slice of that on its own.

Although it was a fail, I can see that a semi-sweet chocolate pie would have been the way to go with a raspberry gelato.  Alternately, with the strawberry ice cream, I would have made a milk chocolate or white chocolate ganache coconut pie. 

Anyway, the process of putting it together is the same, so if you want to try your own version, here is a photo instruction on how I made the Icecream & Coconut Pie PIECAKEN (see below for further tips and instructions):

Some added instructions: 

For the coconut crust, I used 2 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut, mixed with 1/4 cup of coconut sugar and 1/3 cup of melted butter, which I then pressed into a parchment lined pie pan.  I baked this for about 12 minutes at 350 degrees F.

For the pie filling, my butter-ganache was: in a small saucepan, bring to a boil 1/2 cup of whipping cream with 1/2 cup of butter.  Pour it over 8 ounces of 70% dark chocolate and stir until smooth.  Pour into the cooked coconut pie crust.

For a milk chocolate pie filling, follow this truffle recipe with regular milk chocolate (you don't need to use the Caramelia chocolate in the recipe).

Place the pie in the bottom of the icecream cake to make it easier to cut.  If it is in the middle (as I learned the hard way), the ice cream underneath squishes out.

Work fast before your ice cream melts and get it back into a deep freeze as quickly as possible!