Butterscotch Meringue Pie (Dairy Free)

Butterscotch Meringue Pie

When I was a little kid, my family would get together and go out to eat at these all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.  In hindsight, it made sense.  There were a lot of us, and a good number of children when you added my cousins to the mix.  At the dessert table, there were always all sorts of puddings.  One of my favorite was the butterscotch pudding.  It was creamy, rich and buttery and it melted in my mouth.  

My mother never made it at home.  In fact, her idea of pudding was always from a box.  The only pudding she actually made from scratch was rice pudding -- and that's the topic of another blog.  So the butterscotch was a special treat that we only had once in a blue moon at the buffet.  

I had not thought about or even remembered butterscotch pudding until a few weeks ago, when I started taking Nancie McDermott's Pie class on Craftsy.  She demonstrated how to make the butterscotch pie from scratch and it brought back wonderful memories of my childhood.   As soon as I saw her make it, I knew I had to try it.  

Let me tell you, it did not disappoint!  

I found a published version of the recipe on Nancie's blog.  Of course I needed to convert it to a dairy free version.

The recipe called for evaporated milk.  Well, I would have to make that.   I took 1/2 coconut milk and 1/2 almond milk and put it into an oven proof glass bowl.  I baked it on 175 for about 3 hours, let it cool off and stuck the finished product in the fridge. 

Next, I made a 9" pie crust using Earth Balance buttery sticks and blind baked it (first 5 min with pie weights/ remaining 10 min by itself). 

Then I moved on to the sauce.  I followed Nancie's instructions - cooking the brown sugar, flour and evaporated milk on the stove top over medium to high heat until it formed a thick almost paste-like consistency.  Then I tempered my beaten egg yolks and combined them with the sauce off the heat.  I cooked it for a minute or two whisking aggressively (so as not to scramble my egg yolks) and then took it off the heat, added the Earth Balance buttery sticks, and then finally the vanilla.  

As the pie cooled, I moved on to my meringue that I made with my reserved egg whites.  I took it to soft peaks, adding sugar to the mixer one tablespoon at a time until i had nice, but still a little floppy, soft peaks.  I topped the pie with the meringue, fluffed the top a bit, and stuck it back into the oven.  For the last 2-3 min, I put it under the broiler. 

Now it's cooling until I bring it to a friend's house tonight.