Coffee-Coconut Tart

The days around these parts have been getting longer.  The telltale signs of April are all around us.  Steady April showers, tulips ripe and vibrant, azaleas popping and on the rare occasion, blue skies and puffy clouds.  The warm sun on bare arms is the feeling in my dreams.  Gardens are being tidied from winters' storms and long decay.  Still weedless and small, the dirt in these plots is new and clean.  Later in the season flowers and plants will overtake the gardens with not a spot of dirt to be seen, but now the brown dwarfs the green.  A promise of a new and green season is in the air, and even the showers are more tolerable when May is so close by.

To celebrate all things new and fresh I made this tidy little tart with a unique and original flavour combination.  Coffee and coconut don't often marry, but here they come together in a fun little diddy.  While this tart had promise, I found I didn't really enjoy it.  The coconut crust shrunk like a wilted lily in the pan and I found it's coarse texture off putting.  The coffee filling was bitter and far too sweet all at once.  It tasted of straight instant coffee, which is nothing I want to snack on.  And since I didn't use enough whip cream the coconut cream layer never whipped up nice and just added to the overwhelming sweetness that held this tart.  Overall I wouldn't make this tart again, but that shouldn't stop you from trying.

Baking notes:
-I didn't pre-toast the coconut in the tart shell, but I don't think it mattered.  It took on a toasty hue during it's time in the oven.
-Next time I would decrease the instant coffee in the filling by two teaspoons to make the flavour a little more subtle, even though I'm sure it would still be at the forefront.
-In cooking the filling I thought for sure I'd overcooked it the way it looked so curdled even towards the end.  In fact I hadn't, you just need to whip the snot out of it with a whisk and it'll all come together smoothly.
-There has to be a way to decrease the sugar level in the middle and top layer, I found the Coco Lopez overwhelmingly sweet.  Decreasing the white sugar and leaving the coconut the same would be a start.
-I only used a half cup of whip cream in the top layer, so I couldn't achieve the stiff peaks I was looking for.  Of course it didn't change the flavour, it just left the whip cream a little floppy.

The recipe for Coffee-Coconut Tart can be found on the epicurious website.

75/569