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Prep time
4 hours 30 minutes
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Cook time
1 hour
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makes
one 9" pie
Author Notes
If you’ve ever deliciously fantasized about what would happen if a German chocolate cake—with its requisite fudgy, coconut pecan filling, and a nutty, buttery pecan pie—had a baby, today is your lucky day. German Chocolate Pie is for all the chocolate, pecan, coconut lovers in the house and I am hoping there are many. It is fudgy, rich, and dense, with an otherworldly texture from the deeply toasted pecans and shredded coconut. The pie’s chocolate flavor comes from melted chips, but also from a bit of cocoa powder, as I wanted a pronounced chocolate flavor, but without adding sweetness—thankfully, the powder perfectly delivers.
Although a German chocolate cake marries coconut and pecan with evaporated milk, here everything is held together with sweetened condensed milk, as it makes for a fabulously fudgy and milky, yet smoothpie filling. And although it can be sweet, the aforementioned cocoa powder really tempers anything that one might find cloying. Moreover, the SCM manages to give off all the wonderfully chewy, slightly gooey vibes of the evaporated milk cake filling, but all in streamlined pie form.
Some parting words about your pecans: please deeply toast them as it really helps the flavor sing. And as for the coconut, I call for sweetened in the filling for its texture and moisture (the unsweetened can be a little dry) but if you’d prefer to use the unsweetened stuff, by all means go for it.
Finally, the cream cheese crust here is far more forgiving and easier to work with than its all-butter brethren and I like to think it adds a little tang to the sweet situation that is this pie. Moreover, assembling and blind baking the crust is truly the lion’s share of the work here. The pie filling itself is easy-peasy to assemble and will take you all of 5 minutes (if that). If you are a German chocolate cake lover, and I am one, you’ve just met your new favorite pie—and if you’re one of those pecan pie-or-bust, kind of Thanksgiving peeps, brace yourself this November cause there’s a new kid in pie-town. —Jessie Sheehan
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Ingredients
- Crust
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1 1/2 tablespoons
apple cider vinegar
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1 1/2 tablespoons
water
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1 1/2 cups
all-purpose flour
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1 tablespoon
granulated sugar
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1/4 teaspoon
baking powder
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1/2 teaspoon
kosher salt
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4 ounces
cream cheese, chilled, cut into small cubes
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1/2 cup
unsalted butter, chilled, cut into small cubes
- Filling
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1/4 cup
unsalted butter, melted
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2 tablespoons
Dutch-process cocoa powder
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1
14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
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2
large eggs
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1
large egg yolk
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1 1/2 teaspoons
pure vanilla extract
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1 teaspoon
kosher salt
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1 cup
semisweet chocolate chips
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1 cup
pecans, toasted and chopped, plus more for sprinkling, optional
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1 cup
sweetened shredded coconut
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Whipped cream, for dolloping
Directions
- Crust
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Combine the vinegar and water in a small container and place in the freezer.
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Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Rub the cream cheese and butter into the dry ingredients until pea-sized clumps form. Sprinkle the chilled vinegar and water over the bowl, a little at a time, and toss the dough with your hands in order to evenly distribute the liquid. Knead the dough in the bowl a few times until it comes together in a solid mass. Shape the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight.
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Remove the disk from the refrigerator and lightly flour a work surface. Roll the dough into a 12-inch circle, occasionally turning the dough clockwise. Transfer to a 9-inch pie plate and press the dough up the sides of the pie plate, so that once you crimp its edges, the fluted design rests above the top of the pie plate (there is enough dough to do this and it will keep the crust from shrinking when you blind bake it). Prick the bottom with a fork and transfer to the freezer for one hour.
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Heat the oven to 425°F. Crumple up a piece of parchment paper and line the frozen pie crust with it. Fill with pie weights, uncooked beans, or rice. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the pie from the oven. Remove the parchment and pie weights; cool the crust until it reaches room temperature.
- Filling
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Reduce the heat to 350°F. Whisk together the butter and cocoa powder in a large bowl. Add the sweetened condensed milk and whisk to combine. Add the eggs and yolk, one at a time, and whisk to incorporate. Add the vanilla and salt. Fold in the chips, pecans, and coconut with a flexible spatula.
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Transfer the filling to the cooled crust and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until just set—a slight jiggle in the center is okay. Cool to room temperature on the counter, about 2 hours, before serving—or, chill it and serve cold with dollops of unsweetened whipped cream. Store the pie in the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic wrap, for up to 5 days.
Jessie Sheehan is a celebrated cookbook author, recipe developer, baker, and host of Cherry Bombe’s baking podcast, She’s My Cherry Pie. She is the self-proclaimed queen of “easy-peasy baking;” and has contributed recipes and writing to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Epicurious, Food52, Bon Appetit, and more. Her third cookbook, Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy Recipes for Exceptionally Scrumptious Sweets and Treats was a New York Times best cookbook of 2022. And its savory sibling Salty, Cheesy, Herby Crispy Snackable Bakes, was published in the fall of 2024.
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