Comfort zone, Joy has smashed through you again. This was my first attempt at making a meringue pie crust and it turned out beautifully.
Truthfully, I was this close to omitting the orange zest in the crust. Boy, would that have been a mistake! It complements the coffee ice cream so nicely and cuts through the sweetness just a bit. Also, I made sure not to just crush the cookies and finely chop the nuts in the crust, I decided to pretty much pulverize them and I think that helped mine not stick to my pie plate at all.
From egg whites and mix-ins to pie crust.
So lets get on with it. I am not a fan of coffee ice cream. Give me mint chocolate chip anyday. However, I had just bought some Frappuccino in bottles the other day (really just for the bottles, I don’t like to spend that much money on coffee) and just realized how sweet they were. When they first came out I thought they were SO strong but that was before I really started to drink coffee. This time, I almost thought they were too sweet to drink. Almost. So when I got my coffee ice cream out and began to stir to soften it up, I may have had a taste or two. It tasted just like the Frappuccinos I had the week before! I am wondering if the last time I tried coffee ice cream was before I started drinking coffee as well, and that is why I had stayed away from it. I am not sure if I will ever order it but I will have no problem finishing the container that I bought to make this pie.
Pie out of the freezer and then complete with whipped cream.
If you haven’t guessed, I LOVED this pie! Also, if you are not a huge fan of coffee ice cream, there is plenty of vanilla ice cream and whipped cream to cut a bit of the coffeeness. However, I wouldn’t use the zest in the crust then because as I said before, it really complements the coffee ice cream. I didn’t change anything up in the recipe except that I used my vanilla bean paste in the whipped cream instead of regular extract because I had used the Trader Joe’s vanilla wafers (they have visible vanilla bean seeds) and vanilla bean ice cream so I thought I would just continue with the theme. I did also make a chocolate coffee syrup to go on top. As always, if you want the recipe for the pie buy Joy’s wonderful cookbook.
My GeekyLink today is an Avengers/Firefly mashup, both Joss Whedon creations and now both share the same theme song!
