Week 23- The Particular Sadness of Lemonade Pie

Ok, so I totally stole my post title from the name of a book.  For those who don't get the reference, the real title is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  I read it a while back and all I can remember about the book is that it was sort of the same story as Like Water for Chocolate, except that the main character can taste the feelings of the person who prepared her food.  Heaven help her if she lived in my house...

One other thing about the book was that the lemon cake was a lemon cake with chocolate frosting which I thought was a really weird combo- more on this later.

Anyway, this week was a bittersweet week.  My oldest graduated from preschool- and while this may not seem like much, I have been overwhelmed by waves of emotion that my little girl is growing up.  It feels like just yesterday that I was holding a little baby and now she's this entity with friends of her own.  Soon she'll be ignoring me and rolling her eyes at me.  Sigh...

So I made a pink pie to cheer myself up.  A frozen pink lemonade pie with pink coconut on top. At least I thought it would cheer me up.

Until my husband offered to help with the crust while I put the kids to bed.  I should have known something was up when he offered to help of his own volition.

When I came back he had done two things differently than I would have.  One was very smart: he made a graham cracker crust in the pie plate and then pressed a second pie plate on top to flatten the crumbs into a perfectly even crust.

The second thing was a good idea, but not for this pie.  He mixed chocolate graham crackers and regular honey graham crackers.  Now this would have been great for a chocolate cream pie, but this was a LEMONADE pie.  As I mentioned above, I think lemon and chocolate is a weird combo. And trust me, my husband and I have discussed this ad nauseum since he made the crust.

All I'll say is that if either of our feelings went into the taste of that pie,  it would have been a much worse pie.  In the end it was generally tasty, but I couldn't get over the slight chocolate taste in the crust (and it was slightly gritty).  But I will keep the tip on flattening the graham cracker crust and I sure did like the pink coconut!

Pink Lemonade Pie
Adapted from The Prepared Pantry
Pink Lemonade Pie Recipe

1 graham cracker crust- preferably a non-chocolate one :)
1 8 ounce packet of cream cheese
1 14 ounce can of condensed milk
3/4 cup pink lemonade concentrated (just the concentrate, not mixed with water)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Red food coloring
1/3 cup shredded coconut (this really wasn't necessary but it sure was cute)
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix the cream cheese in a stand mixer until it is softened and then add in the can of condensed milk. Slowly add in the lemonade concentrate and the lemon juice.  If you want add, in red food coloring until you get to the desired color.  Pour the mixture into the pie shell and put into the freezer.

Put the coconut in a plastic bag with a few drops of food coloring (make sure you close the bag people.)  Shake until your coconut is pink.

Whip the cream with the sugar and the vanilla.  Top the frozen pie with the cream and coconut and put back in the freezer until you are ready to eat the pie.

I took a picture but the camera is MIA, so will post when I find it!