Coconut Cream Pie Easter Baskets

Since it's the season, I thought it would be fun to make some holiday themed treats. This week is Easter, and next week I'll be making something for Passover!

I'm Jewish, but my sister and I always got Easter baskets while growing up. I think it's just one of those cultural things now that some people do, regardless of their religious leanings. Plus, I think Jim Gaffigan summed it up best when trying to figure out what some of the Easter symbols really had to do with the holiday

Don't worry, there's a bunny!

For this treat, I used 7 half-pint wide-mouth mason jars, and since I don't have my own, I used Ken Haedrich's recipe for coconut cream pie from his wonderful book, "Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie." Also, I used my own pie dough, but you could easily substitute store-bought, and come out with delicious results. I definitely need some practice getting the dough into the jar though, let me tell you it was not pretty, stupid non-sloping sides!

Anyway, start out with clean/dry jars and your pie dough of choice. Roll out your dough and fit it into each of the jars, coming up the sides, but not all the way to the top (I tried to stop once I reached where the threading matches up for the lid to screw on). Then freeze the jars for at least 15 minutes so that the dough is frozen solid.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and take the jars out of the freezer. Because this is a cooked/custard pie, you will need to fully pre-bake the crust, since the actual filling will be cooked on the stove and then refrigerated to set. Press strips of aluminum foil into the dough lined jars and try to mold them to the sides as best as possible (this is why we freeze the dough, so that you don't mess it up when you're lining it with the foil). Then fill them to the top of the crust with pie weights or dry beans. Once your jars are all set, put them in the oven for 15 minutes. I recommend putting them in within casserole dishes, this way if they slide around when you're taking them out of the oven, they're infinitely less likely to slide off and crash to the floor. After the initial 15 minutes, remove them from the oven,  lower the oven temp to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and take out the foil/beans/pie weights - this has initially set the crust so that they're much less likely to shrink once you finish baking them. Using a fork, poke small holes around the inside and bottom of the crusts and stick the pans back into the oven for 15-17 minutes, or until they're golden brown. Be sure to check on them occasionally and if you see the crusts starting to puff up, just press them down with the back of a small spoon.

Once you're crusts are finished baking, set them aside to cool and prepare your filling according the the recipe you choose. Once finished, pour immediately into the finished crusts and press plastic wrap down on top of them while they cool so that they won't develop a skin. After they've cooled, pop them in the fridge for a least 3 hours and you're almost done!

Because I wanted to make these up as Easter baskets, I decided to top them with coconut that I'd dyed green. I found some very easy to follow instructions from the blog, "Musings of a Glamourpuss." Once topped with the edible Easter "grass," I placed a marshmallow bunny, some brightly colored jellybeans and candy eggs on top and voila! A pretty and edible Easter basket in a jar. I tied some ribbon around the outside to give it a little extra cuteness and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Let me know what you think!