NATIONAL DAYFOOD & DRINK

National Coconut Cream Pie Day

National Coconut Cream Pie Day on May 8 honors the American diner counter's most tropical dessert — a tall, cloud-capped slice of custard-filled, coconut-flecked, whipped-cream-blanketed pie. A Southern specialty adopted by every American diner from New York to Los Angeles. Associated with Howard Johnson's, church suppers, and grandmothers' kitchens coast to coast.

MAY8

Saturday, May 8Every year on May 8

days to go

Roots: American South
Vibe: Tropical & Nostalgic
Also on May 8: Military Spouse Appreciation Day · Provider Appreciation Day · Victory Over Europe Day (V-E) Day
Hashtag: #NationalCoconutCreamPieDay

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Ways to celebrate

Bake, buy, or order a slice:

🥧 Bake one from scratch. Par-baked pie shell, stovetop coconut custard, fold-in toasted coconut, whipped cream topping, more toasted coconut on top. 3 hours including chill time. Worth it.
🏪 Visit a classic diner. Most American diners worth their salt still serve coconut cream pie. The rotating pie case is a preserved 1950s American art form.
🥥 Taste a Southern version. Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina coconut cream pies are often sweeter and taller than Yankee versions. Each has local character.
📚 Read Rose Levy Beranbaum. 'The Pie and Pastry Bible' has the definitive technical recipe with stovetop timing down to the minute.
🎉 Host a pie potluck. Each guest brings a different pie. Coconut cream, banana cream, lemon meringue, pecan — the American pie constellation.

Make it your kind of celebration

Family
Kids love making coconut pie. Let them toast the coconut under the broiler (supervised) and dollop the whipped cream. Deeply memorable activity.
Kids
Make miniature pies in muffin tins with store-bought mini graham-cracker crusts. Kid-sized servings; makes the effort feel achievable.
Couples
Date-night bake: one pie, one kitchen, three hours, two people. The chill-time is perfect for dinner and a movie while the pie sets.
Office
Coconut cream pie for an office dessert potluck contests well. Surprisingly few people make it; it disappears first.
School
Great home-economics or family-consumer-science lesson. Custard technique, whipped cream, pastry basics — all transferable skills.
Community
A classic church-supper, neighborhood-block-party, bake-sale offering. Always popular; never goes uneaten.
Just me
Bake one; freeze individual slices; have coconut cream pie on demand for the next six weeks. Genuine joy.

Plan ahead

National Coconut Cream Pie Day is observed on May 8 every year. Here is where it lands for the next ten years, handy for planners, marketers and party people.

2026Fri, May 8this year

2027Sat, May 8

2028Mon, May 8

2029Tue, May 8

2030Wed, May 8

2031Thu, May 8

2032Sat, May 8

2033Sun, May 8

2034Mon, May 8

2035Tue, May 8

2036Thu, May 8

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Fast facts

1920s-1960s diners

Howard Johnson's (1930s-70s)

The story

Coconuts aren't native to America. They arrived at Southern ports in the mid-1800s, shipments from the Caribbean and Pacific landing at Savannah, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Key West. Initially, coconuts were exotic and expensive; by the 1880s, they were cheap enough for home cooks to experiment with. Southern women, particularly in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Carolinas, developed the earliest American coconut desserts: ambrosia, coconut cake, and coconut cream pie.

Read the full story

The cream pie itself is an older American tradition. New England and Pennsylvania Dutch cooks had been making custard-filled pies for a century before coconut arrived. The marriage was natural: a rich vanilla custard, studded with shredded coconut, poured into a blind-baked pastry shell, chilled, and topped with whipped cream. The result was luxuriously rich, distinctly tropical, and photogenic enough to become a restaurant signature.

Then came Howard Johnson's. The iconic American orange-roofed restaurant chain, founded 1925, peaked in the 1970s at 1,000+ locations, made coconut cream pie one of its signature desserts. Pie on the glass-case cart at every location. A road-trip dessert for a whole American generation. Howard Johnson's helped make coconut cream pie a familiar sight on American highways. The chain is mostly gone now; the pie survives.

Today, coconut cream pie lives on in diners, church suppers, family bakeries, and high-end pastry shops reinterpreting the classic. Momofuku Milk Bar's Christina Tosi and Thomas Keller's French Laundry have both published elevated versions. The classic, graham crust, rich custard, whipped cream, toasted coconut, remains the benchmark. It is the American pie case's most photogenic entry: cloud-tall, snow-white, and studded with bronzed coconut flakes.

Four critical details home cooks often miss:

Six regional variations worth knowing:

Did you know?

Coconut cream and coconut custard pies are different.

Coconut CUSTARD pie bakes the eggs and coconut together in the shell (like pumpkin pie). Coconut CREAM pie cooks the custard on the stovetop, then fills the blind-baked shell and chills. Cream is fluffier; custard is denser. Southerners argue passionately about both.

Howard Johnson's had 28 flavors of ice cream and 1 coconut cream pie.

HoJo's famous '28 Flavors' was its ice cream count. But coconut cream pie was the signature dessert in the glass case. Both were made to strict corporate specs across all ~1,000 locations. Mass-market American pie at its peak.