TWD: Banana Coconut Ice Cream Pie

This week’s TWD was chosen by Spike of Spike Bakes: banana coconut ice cream pie!  Spike’s a fellow New Englander (there are only a handful of us in TWD as far as I know!) and we bake in a few of the same groups so I already had some fantastic reasons to be excited about her pick this week.  When I opened the book to check out the recipe though, my anticipation for this dessert rose to another level.  A coconut/shortbread crust filled with a combination of chocolate ice cream and bananas…what’s not to like?  Actually, I know there are some coconut and banana haters in the group, but I’m not one of them; I was psyched for this recipe – I can’t believe I’ve never taken note of it before when flipping through the book!

I almost always scale back the recipes but this week I decided to make a full-size pie since I had such high hopes.  Also, the pie can be kept in the freezer for months so I figured I could make my way through it during that time.  I did, however, make a few changes based on some of the recommendations I saw over on this week’s P&Q’s.  I used graham cracker crumbs in the crust instead of shortbread cookie crumbs because that’s what I had on hand.  The recipe called for a layer of bananas below the ice cream filling, which I skipped.  Speaking of the filling, it consists of chocolate ice cream, bananas, rum and lemon juice.  I omitted the rum (I found the rum very overpowering in the last recipe we made that called for it) and used only one banana instead of two because I wanted the chocolate ice cream to be the star.

The pie came together easily and really is the perfect summer dessert since it doesn’t require any baking – I can’t be the only one who doesn’t want to turn my oven on when it’s 90 degrees out 🙂  I really did love this pie but I’ll get my one complaint about it out of the way first.  The crust was REALLY hard and though it did soften after the pie sat at room temperature for a little while, by then the ice cream was starting to melt too.  Maybe it would be better to make the pie in a springform pan next time.  It was fairly easy to look past that flaw because the pie was so yummy!  The combination of flavors was wonderful and as I’d hoped, the banana flavor was present but not too prominent.  This is a definite repeat here and I especially love that the filling could be varied to include a different kind of ice cream or a different fruit.

Big thanks to Spike for her terrific selection this week!  You can find the recipe for the pie on her blog or on page 350 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.