Buko (Young Coconut) Pie - my most expensive homemade pie in the US

Buko Pie

I had an old old post of buko pie but at the time, not knowing where to get buko, I used macapuno. Not quite the same.

This time, I now know that I can order young coconuts from Hannaford grocery stores and get them the very next day or so. The coconuts are imported from Thailand. I trust Hannaford when it comes to sourcing their produce. So even if pricey at $3.99 per piece, I get my buko fix from Hannaford. Tip: If you order them then get them right away, you will get white meat. If you wait and get the ones displayed on the shelves, the meat is pinkish. Not sure why, but it tastes okay if you can get past the color change.

Yes, it is expensive! Just for the cost of ingredients alone, a pie can cost $15. Add in the labor, gas for the trip to the grocery store, gas to bake, and it could easily be ideally sold at a minimum of $50 per pie! Now if only the pie makers like Marie Callenders can make frozen buko pie from the source, then import them here to the US as ready-to-bake pies...hmmmm...maybe we Fil-Ams should make a demand.

A friend of mine brought buko pie last December for my birthday/Christmas party. One of my co-workers (Black American) who I invited loved the pie and asked me to give one to her as a birthday gift. Her birthday was last Tuesday; I ordered the coconuts Monday. We both worked Wed and Thu, and I finally got my coconuts last Friday. My son's birthday party was yesterday (Saturday) so now that it is Sunday, I finally found the time to tackle this gargantuan task with the help of my son.

Coconut meat scraped from a case of young coconuts imported from Thailand

My able-bodied son cracked the coconuts open and drained the water out into a pitcher, while I scraped the meat. The thinner meat were shaped into squares, and the thicker ones were scraped with the looped scraper (that results to noodle-like shape). After all were done, I ended up with enough to make 3 pies. So, one pie = 3 young coconuts  = roughly 2 cups.

Ingredients: (To make 3 pies)
9 young coconuts (This makes a whole case.)
1 can of 12-oz evap milk
2&1/4 c sugar
1&1/2 c tapioca starch (or cornstarch, if you prefer more body instead of gooey)
1&1/2 c coconut water
3 t pandan extract
few drops of lemon extract

Double pie crusts x 3
egg wash (1 egg plus 1 T milk; beat together)

Instructions:
Mix all ingredients except meat from young coconuts.

Cook on low medium heat while stirring constantly until thick.

Turn off heat and mix in the coconut meat.

This is your filling for 3 double-crust pies.

I only made 2. I froze the third portion for filling another pie at a later time.

I used this organic pie shell for bottom. I used Marie Callender's for top crust.

Brush top with egg wash.

Bake at 400ºF x 15 mins then at 325ºF x 45 mins.

Perfectly golden brown!

Puffed up at the middle. Of course it will shrink once cooled.

Enjoy while warm! Great with coffee or vanilla ice cream. As my son's experience goes, does not go well with cold coconut water (because the coconut water taste becomes indistinguishable).

Mostly coconut meat!

I had a second portion!

Do you need Buko? Here's a tip...

I so want to post more about food, but these times are busy. However, I am posting this, hoping to help anyone in the US (particularly in New England) who needs buko/young coconuts in time for Christmas.

Last week I went to Hannaford hoping to find some buko (young coconuts) to make into pichi-pichi (for the juice) and to mix with cassava cake and sapin-sapin. I did not find a single one. Desperate to get them, I approached a guy unloading some produce from crates, asking who I could talk to if I wanted 15 pieces of young coconut, which I knew they carried before. I was asked for my name and telephone number, and would be referred to their manager (in the produce section). I told them I would need the coconuts by the next week. I also added 5 yucca (although I had several frozen grated yucca packages in my freezer).

Next morning, I had a follow up phone call about who would be the acting manager to assist me (they left a message). I was told they would try to see what they could do about my order.

In the afternoon I was told the coconuts would be coming to their store the next day, then I would just have to ask a guy to get them from the cooler at the back. Whoa!!! So soon! I did not expect that! I was expecting them in about 5 days if they could actually get those.

So off I went to the store on the afternoon of the second day after I made my request. Now they are sitting in a cooler, out in the garage (protected somehow from freezing by the insulation of the cooler.)

Now I am thinking of making them tomorrow into buko salad (although I originally intended to make a fruit salad) instead of just using some in pichi-pichi or cassava cake. My Filipino Christmas party will be on Sunday. My menu so far includes cassava cake, sapin-sapin, dinuguan at puto, bopis, escabecheng tilapia, beef lengua with onions and mushroom, and humba. Giveaways will be hopia, siopao, ensaymada, pan de coco, and lengua de gato plus some jams and pickles. I told my friends it would be potluck.

I hope you have a Hannaford store near you so you can do the same if you plan to make anything with more than 5 buko for Christmas or New Year. I love how they have accommodated my request and so fast too! They just made me into a loyal customer!

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Pandan Cake

Before I start, may I please request for one of my readers to please send me some more of pandan paste (as in the slide show below) or the canned pandan extract (that I used in buco pandan salad)? I would gladly pay for them (just could not find them here). My previous supply was sent by a co-blogger, stel of babyrambutan.net, and my present pandan and buco-pandan extracts were sent to me by Deb from California. Thanks to them, but I do not feel like requesting from them again. Dyahe....

The pandan chiffon cake recipe I have below is courtesy of my online friend Helen in Australia. I made it for the first time last Friday to bring to my friend Fe's birthday celebration last Saturday.

Helen cuts the sugar and coconut milk in half per her preference. I used the exact amounts stated in the procedure and still found the cake a bit less sweet than I had anticipated, although the sweet frosting made up for it. Fe, however, is like Helen in that she always cuts her sugars in half whenever she makes cakes, rolls, or kakanin. It is a matter of preference, so feel free to experiment with yours.

The pandan butter-coco-cream frosting was something I made up basing on some online recipes I found.

(The chocolate writing on the frosting was melted semi-sweet morsels that I piped out to write onto a parchment paper then cooled. Too bad it broke when I was trying to stand it up on the cake, so we just laid it down.)

Just this afternoon, Fe called me to ask whether I had posted the recipe yet, because she only had a slice of our leftover (We had two cakes, a white cake from my friend Ana, and this one, so Fe ended up with leftover of both. She had half of pandan cake left that Saturday). Then her son had finished the rest of the leftover, so now she wants to bake one.

Thanks, Helen, for this delightful pandan chiffon cake recipe!

Ingredients:
-Batter-
2 cups cake flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup sugar or to taste
1/3 cup oil
6 egg yolks
1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp pandan extract (I used paste)

-Meringue-
6 egg whites
1 tsp lemon (or vinegar)
1/2 cup sugar

-Pandan Butter-Coco-Cream Frosting-
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 tsp buco pandan extract (McCormick)
2-4 cups confectioner's sugar (depends on how sweet you want it)

Instructions:
Sift dry ingredients together (up to 3 times, ideally). Mix well.
Make a well at the center then add oil, yolks, coconut milk and pandan paste. Mix well.
Beat egg whites with vinegar until soft peak forms. Add sugar slowly while beating, beat until stiff but still glossy (do not overbeat).
Add a little of the meringue to batter mixture and blend well, before slowly folding in the rest of the batter into the beaten whites.
Pour into an UNGREASED bundt pan or angel food cake pan (no grease apparently helps keep the volume fluffed up by helping the cake cling onto the walls).
Bake at 350 deg F for 45-50 minutes.
After baking, invert onto a wire rack WITHOUT REMOVING THE PAN. Let the cake COOL COMPLETELY before easing it out of the pan. You may use spatula to let the cake loose. (Again, these apparently help keep the chiffon cottony fluffy.)



Note: The emphasis I made in the procedures were tips I read about AFTER I made the cake. My chiffon cake was quite dense but still of satiny texture, and maybe I should have read more on those tips to maximize its volume and make it lighter.

For the icing, heat up the coconut milk on medium, stirring constantly until creamy. Let cool.

Cream the softened butter with 2 cups confectioner's sugar and pandan flavor, and add the coconut milk gradually. Taste if you like the sweetness already. If not, add some more sugar to taste. If it becomes to thick, you can thin to your desired spreading consistency by adding a little (about 1 tbsp increments) of regular milk or cream (if you have run out of heated coconut milk).

Let cake cool completely before spreading the pandan icing/frosting.

Buco Pandan Salad

Another longed-for Filipino dessert...

I got ideas from oggi (but I don't have pandan leaves nor gulaman bars). I was adamant I would NOT ever use Jell-O for this classic Filipino dessert. For one thing, I never liked Jell-O gelatin. The consistency is just not the same. Too jiggly and soft for me. And they gel longer too. Plus, they come from animal sources (the collagen), while agar-agar is from a seaweed.

Anna, Celia and I wolfed our serving down hungrily. My kids looked freaked out by its color, but loved its taste.

WARNING: Eat sparingly. Loaded with cream cheese and heavy cream (kaya nga yummy!).

Ingredients and Instructions:

For the gelatin:
juice from 3 buco (young coconuts)
1 can (14 oz) pandan leaves extract (Maesri brand; sent to me by Deb -- Thanks!)
water (enough to reach 4 cups when combined with buco juice and pandan extract)
1 (20 ml) buco pandan flavor (McCormick)
4-6 tsp of agar-agar (available at amazon.com; I bought mine, an expensive brand, from Spice of Life here but seeing amazon's, I should have just ordered from them.)
1/2 cup sugar

Note: The suggested ratio of agar-agar to liquid on the back of the label was 1 tbsp agar-agar to 1 cup of liquid. I read from burntlumpia's post that he found 1 tsp in 1 cup gives the right consistency, and that 1 tbsp results in too firm a gelatin.

Let agar-agar stand in the mixture of liquids liquids for 15 minutes then start boiling together until agar-agar is dissolved completely. Try cooling a small amount in the fridge for about 3 minutes and check if you like the consistency. If not, add a little more and reheat until the agar-agar dissolves. Add sugar when agar-agar is completely melted (not sure if it would get in the way of dissolving the agar-agar so I added it last). Place in 13x9 glass pan; cover and chill until solid. Cut into cubes. Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Shredded young coconut meat (I had very little from the 3 buco because only one of them had meat that was not mala-uhog, so I opened 2 cans of canned young coconuts pre-cut in triangles. I discarded the "buco" juice from those cans as they tasted like very diluted. The coconut meat that came from these cans were not too pleasing when eaten plain, but mixed as buco salad, they are ok. The frozen shredded are too mature for buco salad use. The freshly shredded ones are still the best.)

1 can kaong (palm seeds in heavy syrup); drained (optional; I added because I had it in my pantry, and goes well with coconut)

Creamy Sauce
1 (14 oz) can condensed milk
equal amount of heavy cream (use the can of condensed milk to measure)
6 oz cream cheese spread

Beat the cream cheese first until smooth. Add the condensed milk slowly, then the heavy cream. Pour into the gelatin and shredded young coconuts and let chill.

Tapioca Pearls (optional)
Boil 4 cups of water then add 1/2 cup of tapioca pearls. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Turn heat off, cover and let stand 15 minutes or until translucent. Rinse with cold water 3 times. Place in a jar then add cold water to cover and refrigerate. Add these only when serving the buco pandan salad (not sure what the effect is if you mix right away).

Note: I love placing my buco pandan in the freezer for about 30 minutes to an hour to have some ice crystals before serving.

Macapuno (Coconut sport strings) Ice Cream

I looked for a recipe for coconut ice cream just to get an idea of how I should tweak it to make it more coconut-ty. Got the original recipe from allrecipes.com and below is my revised recipe.

Before I made this, I asked my MIL and SIL to try the macapuno. They were surprised to find that coconut can be so tender!!! They are used to coconut being chewy, and they are not really a big fan of coconut. But I think I have converted them...Will let them taste this one as soon as I get the time to bring them some.

My husband, as usual, was so-so with the macapuno. He still prefers the Old-fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream, which I made earlier, for our celebration of July 4th.

A note to Debbie:
My sis in Pinas could not find a sorbetero willing to share the recipe for dirty ice cream. I hope you will give this one a try. My Pinay friends definitely rave over this.

Ingredients:

1 cup coconut premium milk (I use Thai brand)
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
2 (14-oz) cans cream of coconut (I use Lopez brand; available in the alcohol section of Hannaford)
3 cups heavy cream
1 jar of macapuno (coconut sport strings; available at Asian/Filipino stores)
Buko pandan flavor (optional)

Macapuno	Buko Pandan Essence

Instructions:

1. Scald milk and coconut milk plus salt over low heat.
2. Remove from heat and add heavy cream and cream of coconut.
3. Chill for at least 4 hours.
4. Freeze using an ice cream maker. (Mine is Rival.)
5. When done, immediately stir in macapuno. (Optional: Add several drops of buko pandan. That's the greenish ice cream in the picture. Personally, I like the plain one.)
6. Freeze overnight. (You might have to stir every 30 minutes or so for the first 4 hours to make sure the macapuno is distributed evenly.)
7. Optional garnishings: additional macapuno, kaong, or nata de coco (available in Asian stores).

Buko (Coconut) Pie

Before Christmas, I bought a coconut that I saw at Hannaford, the kind that we would label as niyog in PI. My plan was to make a buko pie with it, according to the recipe that stel gave to me. I waited til the 23rd to see what kind of coconut it was. I was dismayed at what I saw...I had half-expected it, but I was hoping it was not so - a very mature coconut. I got the coconut water, then tried to scoop thin flesh, but I found it too hard for the spoon. I got a fork, and I came up with nyog that we usually use on puto, kutsinta, etc...you get the idea.

I stored the nyog in a jar in a fridge, thinking of what to do next.



Then I opened the macapuno jar that Joanne gave me, but found it too mature to be labeled as macapuno...hmmmm...but not too mature to be used in buko pie.



So, I got stel's recipe and proceeded with my experiment.



The ingredients as per stel's recipe were:



2 cups buko meat (which I did not have; I had the whole jar of macapuno with its syrup)

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup coconut water

1/2 1/2 cup evaporated milk (I used fresh milk)

1/2 cup starch



I forgot to look at her instructions (I scribbled it alongside other notes from the net), which called for cooking the mixture and stirring continuously then pouring it into a pastry-lined pan, to top with the 2nd crust then baked at 400 deg F til brown. What I actually did was to pour directly the uncooked mixture into the pastry-lined pan, top with the second crust, brush with eggwash, bake at 400 deg for 15 minutes then a further45 minutes at 325 deg F.



After it has cooled down to a comfortable-to-the-palate warmth, I started gobbling it up. Shared it with hubby, who could not decide whether he liked it or not, but he kept tasting it again and again that he ate half of the slice, saying, "It's different; the texture is interesting. I still can't decide whether I like it or not...maybe I'll have a slice when I come back. (He was about to go to the local store to get his supply of Pepsi, a habit I find hard to break for his own sake.) I was thrilled that he seemed to have liked it, but the novelty of the texture and taste (they are used to tart-sweet gooey fruit pies, whereas we Filipinos like em sweet and with a definite form).



My older son was hooked to it, he asked for another. My younger did not even try. When hubby came back, I was ready to offer him a slice while it was still warm, but he declined because he had to use the bathroom...Oooops...guess those who are not used to coconut will always have to deal with that problem initially. I and older son enjoyed it for the next 2 days, reheating the pie for several minutes in the oven toaster.