Buttermilk Coconut Pie

I listed 6 new properties this week — each one a different story, a different kitchen, a different family waiting to happen. The spring market is alive with the particular energy of people who have decided this is the year they change their address and their life.

Sophia came home with straight A's on her progress report and announced it with the casual confidence of a girl who expects excellence from herself and receives it. She has Nikos's pride — the kind that pretends not to care while caring so fiercely it has its own gravitational field.

The bakery smelled like honey this morning when I stopped by. That smell — warm honey and butter and the faint yeast of dough rising — is the smell of my childhood and my mother and my father and every Sunday morning of my life. Some smells are time machines. The bakery is mine.

I made spanakopita pie — the big slab, not triangles — because fall demands hot pie and hot pie is what spanakopita was born to be. The kitchen smelled like lemon and charcoal and I thought: this is what survives. Not the money or the stress or the arguments about phyllo. The food survives. The recipes survive. The love baked into every dish survives.

The house was quiet this evening. I sat at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and the remains of dinner and I thought about all the tables I have sat at — Mama's table in Tarpon Springs, the table in the South Tampa house I lost, the table in the apartment where I started over, this table where I have fed my children for years. Every table is a different chapter. The food connects them all.

The spanakopita was long gone by the time I sat down with that glass of wine, but the craving for pie — real, golden, straight-from-the-oven pie — hadn’t left me. I thought about Mama’s buttermilk coconut pie, the one she’d make when the phyllo ran out and the house still needed something sweet. It’s not Greek, but it’s ours now — the kind of recipe that crosses borders when you’ve sat at enough tables to stop caring about categories and start caring about what tastes like home.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups sweetened shredded coconut
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Place the unbaked pie crust in a 9-inch pie plate and crimp the edges.
Mix the filling. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until smooth. Add the melted butter, buttermilk, flour, vanilla, and salt, whisking until well combined.
Add the coconut. Fold the shredded coconut into the filling mixture until evenly distributed.
Pour and bake. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the center is set with a slight jiggle.
Cool before serving. Let the pie cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Buttermilk Coconut Pie — The Pie That Connects Every Table