Pie Club Week 7: Challenge

Week 7 was a challenge week! I let a loyal customer (who asked) give me his 4 favorite ingredients, and challenge me to make a pie with them. It was super fun! And, turned out to be the favorite pie so far...

The 4 ingredients were pineapple, vanilla, coconut and cashews. I love all the ingredients also and right away I had some ideas, so I thought out a few different options before I settled on what I wanted to bake. I decided to incorporate the cashews into the crust in the form of a nut flour substitution. Basically, I made cashew flour and substituted some of it into the flour for my pate brisee. Then, I decided to use the pineapple filling from my pineapple pie (week 1) as the base and first layer. For the second layer, I decided to use some of the coconut filling from my coconut cream pie (week 2). I topped all of that with vanilla flavored, freshly whipped cream, and finished it with a healthy sprinkle of toasted coconut and toasted, chopped cashews!

The result was a light and delicious, creamy dream! There were some slight crunches from the coconut, cashews and flaky crust, and some gooey, nicely sour note from the pineapple. It was great, the customer was thrilled with the result and so was I! The only thing I would change about this pie, would be to make the pineapple layer thicker. The pineapple was slightly lost in all the creaminess, but I will definitely be making this again! I loved challenge week!