The Cream of The Banana Crop

I’ve been in the mood to make a pie recently and learned a friend of ours, who just so happens to love pie, was having a birthday.  We knew one of his favorite pies was Banana Cream, which I have never made before, so I was excited to try it out.

The first thing to do was make the pie crust.  I’ve learned to make some killer pie crusts so I wasn’t worried about this step.  I followed my regular recipe and refrigerated the dough over night.

I then went on the hunt for the banana cream side of this pie.  I found a lot of various recipes and settled on this one from Martha Stewart.

I like to break down a recipe into basic components so I’m not intimidated by it.  To me “Banana Cream Pie” sounds daunting. So when I learned that a banana cream pie is nothing more than 1) vanilla pudding and 2) sliced bananas, it put my mind at ease.  I’ve made chocolate pudding before so I knew vanilla would be about the same.

Pudding can be tricky since you’re heating milk and eggs and want to end up with a thick custard.  I followed Martha’s recipe to a T and it came out perfectly.

I pre-baked the pie crust, put down a layer of banana slices, then filled it with the vanilla pudding/custard.  The egg yolks are what make it more of a custard and adds the nice flavor.

We then made our traditional whipped cream to finish it off.  Remember what whip cream is? Heavy cream + air.  You got it.  We added a little confectioner sugar this time for sweetness.  Here’s me piping it on like a true professional.

The final product.

And once more at a cool angle.  You can almost taste it can’t you?