Peanut Butter Pie with Coconut Whipped Cream

NOTE: The day before you plan on making your pie, place can of coconut cream in the back of your fridge to chill overnight. This is imperative, as without proper chilling, the coconut cream has no chance of whipping up.

All-Butter Pie Dough:

1. Mix vinegar and water together, then add a few ice cubes. Store in fridge until ready to use.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Add cold, cubed butter to flour mixture, tossing around gently to coat. With pastry blender in one hand, cut in butter while rotating bowl in quarter-turns with your other hand. Stop once the pieces of butter are roughly pea sized. (You’ll want to have some that are a little bigger and some that are a little smaller to maximize the delicious flakiness!)
4. Add ice cold water-vinegar mixture one tablespoon at a time, quickly mixing together with your hands. Continue adding water one tablespoon at a time until the dough comes together. The goal is for the dough to hold together when squeezed into a ball, but with a few dry bits still left in the bowl.
   NOTE: Do NOT add all of the water at once. You don’t want the dough to get so wet that it becomes sticky. You should only be adding 4–5 tablespoons of water total.
5. Wrap dough in cling film, then press into a patty shape about 1-inch thick. Place wrapped dough in fridge overnight. (You could refrigerate for only two hours if you’re in a hurry, but overnight is recommended.)

Blind Baking Pie Crust:

1. Once your dough has chilled and rested, flour your work surface and rolling pin. Retrieve dough from fridge, place on your well-floured surface, and sprinkle top with a little bit of flour.
2. Begin gently rolling out the dough into a circle, making sure to pick up and rotate the dough every few rolls.
3. Once your dough is roughly a 12–14" circle and ¹/₈- to ¼-inch thick, gently place dough into your 9" pie dish. Delicately press dough into bottom and up sides of dish.
4. Trim edges of dough to an even 1" overhang around pie dish.
5. Roll edges underneath themselves to create the crust rim. Crimp or style rim however you like.
6. Place pie crust in fridge for at least 30 minutes. This allows the gluten to relax and the butter to firm up.
7. Move rack to bottom third of oven. Heat oven to 375°F.
8. Retrieve crust from fridge. Dock pie crust (prick bottom all over with a fork).
9. Slightly crumple a piece of parchment paper, then use to line crust, making sure parchment reaches all the corners of the dish. Fill with pie weights or at least 1 lb of dry beans, then place on a baking sheet.
10. Bake crust for 20–25 minutes.
11. Pull crust out of the oven, but don’t turn the oven off yet. Don oven mitts and carefully remove parchment and weights.
12. Return crust to oven and bake for an additional 20–25 minutes or until crust is dry and golden brown.
13. Transfer to a wire rack and allow crust to cool completely.

Peanut Butter Crème Pâtissière:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch and salt for 3–4 minutes until mixture is pale yellow and reaches the ribbon stage.
2. In a medium saucepan, bring milk to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently.
3. Slowly pour a small amount of hot milk into egg yolk mixture while whisking constantly. (This gently raises the temperature of the eggs so that they don’t end up scrambled.) After egg yolk mixture has been tempered, slowly pour in remaining milk while continuously whisking.
4. Pour mixture through a sieve back into saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-low heat, whisking constantly to keep mixture from scorching and lumps from forming. The pastry cream is ready when large bubbles slowly come to the surface and pop through the thick, pudding-esque mixture.
5. Remove from heat, then whisk in Sweet Peanut Spread.
6. Pour into a heat-safe bowl. Immediately press cling film directly onto surface. Let cool to room temperature, then transfer to fridge to chill for at least 1 hour.

Coconut Whipped Cream:

1. When you’re ready to make the coconut whipped cream, place metal mixing bowl and whisk attachment in freezer for 15 minutes.
2. Retrieve coconut cream from fridge, taking care to not tip or shake the can. Open can and scoop out the top layer of rather thick coconut cream, leaving the liquid in the can. (You can save the liquid for a smoothie, if you like.)
3. In the chilly bowl of a stand mixer fitted with cold whisk attachment, whip thick, cold coconut cream on high for 60 seconds. Add confectioners’ sugar and vanilla, beating until smooth, 60–75 seconds. Scrape down bowl as necessary to ensure all confectioners’ sugar is incorporated.
4. Place coconut whipped cream in fridge until you’re ready to assemble your pie.

Assembly & Decoration:

1. Once pie crust is totally cool, peanut butter crème pâtissière has been chilled, and coconut whipped cream has been made, it’s pie o’clock! Retrieve pastry cream from fridge and whisk it a little to loosen it up.
2. Using an offset spatula or the back of a spoon, spread peanut butter crème pat in an even layer over bottom of pie crust.
3. Retrieve coconut whipped cream from fridge. Spread over crème pat with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon.
4. If you choose, decorate your pie! For a wee bit of crunch and more peanutty goodness, I adorned my pie with chopped pieces of NouBon Peanut Crunch.
5. Chill pie for 30 minutes, then enjoy!
6. Store any leftover pie uncovered (or loosely covered with aluminum foil) in the fridge.