Easy Coconut Custard Pie (Impossible Pie)

When I think of “Impossible Pie”, I think of the savoury kind. You know the old ‘shake and bake’ pie that has been doing the rounds for years? I remember my sister giving me the recipe for that years ago and it’s a great recipe to have to whip up a quick crustless quiche for a mid-week dinner. Just throw all the ingredients together, the crust forms from the little bit of flour added and the cheese added makes it go golden on top. It’s one of my favourite ‘go to’ recipes.

But when I met my fiance, he talked about Impossible Pie being his favourite pie. I made him the savoury one and he said “that’s not it, it’s supposed to be sweet and taste like coconut”. After a little bit of research this is what I found out about the ‘amazing’ Impossible Pie.

“Amazing. Mysterious. It could be none other than Impossible Pie, one of the most successful corporate recipe projects in the U.S. food-marketing history. Versions of Impossible Pie were also named Mystery Pie or Amazing Coconut Pie. By any name, though, Americans took to the easy recipe that is adaptable for making both sweet dessert pies and savory meat, vegetable and cheese pies. Back when quiche was trendy, the Impossible Pie formula called for ingredients similar to those for quiche yet eliminated the need to make a separate pastry crust…Not one but two huge food corporations benefited by popularizing the simple recipe formula for the Impossible Pie mixtures: the two big “Generals.” One was the Minneapolis-based General Mills, home of mythical Betty Crocker and maker of Bisquick all-purpose baking mix. The other was General Foods of White Plains, N.Y., marketer of Angel Flake processed coconut…The real mystery: Where did this recipe originate? We know the two “Generals” took a basic formula and then developed variations to showcase their respective products. Lisa Van Riper, spokeswoman for Kraft General Foods, said the company’s well-advertised recipe for Amazing Coconut Pie, “was developed as a result of a creative adaptation of the Bisquick Impossible Pies. We took a Bisquick Impossible Pie and did a creative twist by adding coconut, raisins and some other things. That was developed in June 1976 by our test-kitchen’s task force from a recipe submitted by various sources. Essentially that source was the Bisquick Impossible Pie. The Amazing Coconut Pie recipe also forms its own crust–with the baking mix sinking to the bottom of a custard mixture–and has been used ever since 1976, according to Van Riper. General Mills’ Marcia Copeland, director of Betty Crocker foods and publications, recalls that “we first saw the recipe for (crustless) coconut custard pies in Southern community cookbooks.” So it was a grass-roots recipe first, origin unknown. Some very old community cookbooks contain pie recipes that make their own crusts just from flour; others call for homemade biscuit mix. Copeland said that the Impossible Pie phenomenon lasted from the late 1970s through the 80s… General Mills’ home economists developed variations for Impossible Chicken n’ Broccoli Pie, for Enchilada, Lasagna, Taco, Pizza and Beef Mushroom Impossible Pies, even an Impossible Turkey n’ Stuffing Pie…”

—“Mission: Impossible Pie: The Secret’s in the Batter,” Joyce Rosencranz, Houston Chronicle, June 9, 1993, Foo (p. 1) (Source)

So there you have it. I was not necessarily wrong but found out there is sweet and savoury versions of this amazing pie. So last week I made it for my man. He’s obviously been watching too many cooking shows with me because he scored me an 8 out of 10 saying he could do better. Well, the challenge is on. He better put his pie where his mouth is because I thought it was pretty darn good and I’m not a lover of eggs, as you know. One bowl, all ingredients mixed together, whack it in a pie dish, bake and you’re done. How much easier can you get? It was delicious!

Impossible Pie
(From allrecipes.com)

• 2 cups (500ml) milk
• 1 cup (90g) desiccated coconut
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 120g butter or margarine
• 3/4 cup caster or white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1. Place milk, coconut, eggs, vanilla, flour, margarine and sugar in blender. Mix well.
2. Pour into a greased and floured 25cm pie plate. Sprinkle nutmeg on top.
3. Bake at 180 degrees C for 45 minutes.

Pear, Thyme & Ginger Cake with Ginger Custard & Walnut Praline

So, this is the dish I cooked for the Gourmet Garden Best Blogger-Come-Chef competition a fortnight ago in Noosa. After I won my heat back in November last year and once the dust had settled, I set my mind to what I might cook come May. You all know how I love to bake and I wanted to show how versatile herbs could be in sweet dishes. So, what to cook?

I didn’t have any brief, like what equipment was available, how long we had, did we have an oven, could we do a sweet, blah blah blah. I had visions of a savoury cheesecake, a baked pastry plait, tropical tapioca puddings featuring herb infused tropical fruits. My mind was working overtime. I’ve always known pear goes well with thyme as I’ve had it in fruit loaf my Nanna cooked. I experimented with a few different recipes and all worked well in the oven but what if I didn’t have access to an oven? Two weeks out from the competition, we found out we had 45 minutes to cook and an oven between 11 of us so I figured I’d steam the cake instead. A bit of tweaking to the recipe and the above cake was born. My son and I tried it about half a dozen times, so about 6 kilos later, after experimenting with ice cream, custard etc, I decided on the custard and walnut praline additions.

I would rather this cake be baked in an oven and served with a side of double cream and I will whip one of those up in due course (once I get through the overflowing supply of pear cakes in the freezer). The recipe would be slightly different should you want a baked cake. I did bake this recipe in the oven and although okay once straight out of the oven. It goes quite hard when cold but could easily be zapped in the microwave to soften up.

Here’s the recipe, for one cake but could easily serve two. (It might seem like a lot of components but they work pretty well together. You could just make the cake and serve with ice cream.)

Pear, Thyme & Ginger Cake

• 1 egg
• 2 tbs milk
• 1 tbs oil
• 1 tsp Gourmet Garden thyme (or 1 tsp fresh or 1/2 tsp dried)
• 1 tbs Gourmet Garden ginger (or 1 tbs grated fresh or 1 tsp powdered)
• 2 tbs sugar
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ c SR flour
• 1 pear
• extra butter for greasing dish

Caramel Sauce:

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbs butter
• 1/4 cup cream

Ginger Custard:

• 300ml milk
• 1 tbs cornflour
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs Gourmet Garden ginger (or 1 tbs grated fresh or 1 tsp ground ginger)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Walnut Praline:

• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1 cup sugar

1. Put saucepan with steamer insert (or wok with bamboo steamer) filled with water onto boil.
2. Mix together egg, milk, oil, thyme, ginger, cinnamon and sugar until well combined.
3. Sprinkle flour on top and mix well.
4. In a small saucepan, melt together 1/3 cup brown sugar and 2 tbs butter.
5. Peel pear and dice. Add half diced pear to cake batter and other half pear to melted brown sugar/butter mixture and remove from heat.
6. Grease a suitable container well with butter. (I used a large round tea cup.)
7. Spoon a couple pieces of diced pear into greased container.
8. Spoon over batter, cover with foil and put in steamer and steam for approx 20 mins.
9. Cake will be done when a skewer is inserted and comes out clean.
10. Toast walnuts in an oven or pan until warm to touch.
11. In a pan, sprinkle sugar for praline and do not stir. Move pan around to finish melting all the sugar. Pour over walnuts and spread out on a baking dish lined with baking paper. Will harden in a short time.
12. Add cream to brown sugar/butter mixture and return to heat to warm through.

Custard:

1. Add a little milk to the cornflour in a saucepan.
2. Add egg yolk, ginger, sugar and vanilla and mix well.
3. Add remaining milk and stir over a medium heat with a wooden spoon until thickened or it coats the back of the spoon.

To assemble:

1. Spoon caramel sauce on the plate where cake will be placed.
2. Carefully place cake on top of caramel sauce. Add custard to a serving bowl.
3. Take 2 or 3 sugar coated walnuts and place on top of cake.
4. Finely chop remaining sugared walnuts and place on the side of the cake and on the plate.

It might seem like a lot of ingredients and a lot of processes but honestly, its quite simple to put together. Trust me, I wouldn’t want to put myself under any unnecessary stress!

Custard Creams, Yo Yo's or Melting Moments

All depends what part of the country you’re in, I suppose. The recipe I used was from my high school text book “Day to Day Cookery” and they were called “Custard Creams”. That delightful nearly fudge-like biscuit with lemon icing sandwiched between. I do love them iced with passionfruit icing but I had leftover lemon icing in the freezer so used that. Any biscuit that involves the dough being rolled into balls is a good one to get the kids involved. More dough goes into their mouths than it does on the baking tray, but that’s okay. They’re really getting the hang of it.

Custard Creams

160g butter, melted
1/2 cup icing sugar
1.1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup custard powder

NB: If you don’t have custard powder, use 1/2 cup cornflour and 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Icing:
2 tbs butter
1 cup icing sugar
juice of half a lemon (add more if required)

NOTE: As a convenience and time-saver to me, I have been melting the butter when making biscuits lately instead of creaming with the sugar and the biscuits always work out well. I’m not sure what difference it makes but it’s a great time-saver. I also roll my biscuits into very small balls. I feel I get a lot more that way and they seem to last longer.

1. Combine melted butter and icing sugar.
2. Sift flour and custard powder together.
3. Add to butter mixture and mix into a stiff paste.
4. Roll into small balls and place on baking tray.
5. Press each biscuit down slightly with a floured fork (or as I did) with the bottom of a glass.
6. Bake in a 160 deg C (150 deg C fan forced) oven until a pale golden colour, approx 10 mins.
7. Join in pairs with lemon icing.

Icing:
Combine all ingredients until a stiff paste forms. Use as required.