You’ll use coconut three ways for this incredibly delicious coconut cream pie. Get ready for a cloud of sweet cream with toasted coconut atop a creamy, coconut-packed filling and buttery, flaky crust.

The joy that I feel after making this coconut pie recipe is real! It’s a bit of a process, but worth every step, and even though it has quite a few of them, the steps are absolutely doable! Promise. You can break this pie down into three parts: the crust, the coconut filling, and the whipped sweet cream topping.

If you love cream pies and coconut, this coconut cream pie is an absolute must-try! I’d happily skip every birthday cake from now on for this pie. It’s stunning, and genuinely hard to resist when it’s sitting in the fridge, which by the way is another bonus. It lasts up to 4 days in your fridge! For more cream pies, I love this Banana Cream Pie so much that I’m already contemplating a banana-coconut combo, and this Fresh Strawberry Pie has been a reader favorite for years!

Key Ingredients

• Pie Crust: You can use homemade or store-bought pie crust. I use my favorite Flaky Butter Pie Crust to make this coconut cream pie. It’s made with butter and turns out light and flaky, which is perfect with the creamy filling. My recipe makes enough for 2 pies, but you can use half the batch and freeze the remaining dough for another day.
• Coconut Milk and Regular Milk: Use full-fat canned coconut milk for this pie (light coconut milk won’t work as well). We mix the coconut milk with regular milk for the filling.
• Coconut: In the filling, we use shredded sweetened coconut, then for the topping, we love the larger coconut flakes (mine are from Bob’s Red Mill). If you want only to use one variety, stick with the shredded sweetened coconut, as the larger flakes are just for visual appeal. I have tried this filling with unsweetened shredded coconut, and it definitely works, but they are slightly more gritty and less sweet in the filling.
• Vanilla Bean and Vanilla Extract: We use a vanilla bean for the filling and love the slightly richer vanilla flavor it adds. That said, you can skip it for vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract. Tips for how much to use are below the recipe.
• Eggs and Flour: These are what thicken our coconut custard filling.
• Heavy Cream: The sweet cream topping starts with cream. You want it cold and with a high fat content, so look for “heavy cream” or “heavy whipping cream.”
• Sugar: You’ll add plain granulated sugar to the filling and the sweet cream topping. It’s the sugar that helps stabilize the whipped cream, making it last well into day 4 in the fridge.
• White Chocolate: Adding white chocolate shavings to the top was inspired by a mini coconut cream pie I had at Dahlia Bakery in Seattle. They’re pretty famous (and for good reason). They add white chocolate, and it always stuck with me, so here I am today suggesting you do the same for your pie!

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Homemade Coconut Cream Pie

It’s hard to resist this coconut cream pie! Just thinking of it makes my mouth water. Don’t be turned off by the length of our recipe below. Each step is easy to do (promise). Here are a few tips to help you along:

Tip 1: Prevent your crust from shrinking. If you are starting with a homemade crust, you’ll need to roll it out, form it into your pie dish, and then crimp the edges. A common issue with homemade butter crusts is that they can shrink when baked. To prevent this, we recommend two things: first, chill the crust in the pie dish for at least 30 minutes. Second, take extra time to build up the edges of the crust. You can either fold the excess dough underneath itself and crimp it, or roll out a second crust and add strips of dough to the edges. This extra thickness around the border will prevent the pie from shrinking.

Tip 2: Take care when tempering your eggs. To make the coconut filling, you’ll heat coconut milk, milk, and vanilla before mixing it with whisked eggs, flour, and sugar. If you were to dump the hot coconut milk into the eggs, they’d scramble. To prevent this, slowly whisk a small amount of the hot mixture into the eggs, then repeat. This process gently raises their temperature without scrambling them. It’s easy, but when you get to this step, take a moment to prepare by re-reading the recipe step so it all goes smoothly.

Tip 3: Chill the pie overnight. Chilling the pie is my least favorite part of the recipe, and once you take your first bite, I think you’ll understand why. Just like with cheesecake or peanut butter pie, the filling needs time to set fully. So, you must refrigerate your pie overnight to firm up properly. It’s a hard wait, but worth it in the end.

Tip 4: Keep the pie chilled until serving. For the best texture, cream pies need to stay chilled. Otherwise, the filling and whipped cream will soften. The great news is that this pie keeps beautifully in the fridge. I’ve had it in there for up to 4 days and still loved every bite.