recipe: banana cream pie

Okay, so I wanted to make a pie the other day for Pi Day. In actuality I made 3 pies, but I’ll only talk about the most awesome of the three. Oh yes, it was awesome.

I had a bit of a hard time deciding what type of pie to make for dessert because there are so many yummy options. I decided on banana cream because I hadn’t ever had it before. Also, the first thought that comes to mind when someone mentions pie is old school television where folks would get a banana cream pie to the face – hilarious!

Now, you can totally cheat and use vanilla pudding mix for the pie, but I wanted something a bit more authentic, so I hit up recipezaar.com to find an easy, but delicious recipe.

Here’s what I needed:

• 1 9 in pie crust (I used graham cracker crust)
• 3 c whole milk
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1/3 c flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 egg yolks (I beat together thoroughly)
• 2 tbsp butter (I melted)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 bananas (You can use more if you’d like)

Basically, I made my own pudding mix by combining all dry ingredients. I then added the scalded milk slowly. I had never heard of “scalding” in cooking before, so I looked it up – it achieves the state just before boiling. Note: Make sure you stir continuously so that pudding doesn’t burn on the bottom. After thoroughly mixed on low heat, you add some of the mix to the beaten eggs and then pour the eggs into the main mixture. This is to get that custard consistency. The butter and vanilla are added last. While the pudding mix cooled down, I placed banana slices all over the bottom of the pie crust. I waited until the pudding was room temperature to pour in the crust because I didn’t want the bananas to turn brown.

I didn’t stir frequently enough and my heat was too high,  so my pudding burnt a bit. I liked this recipe, it was very easy and the end result was great. I added a meringue on top to hide the burnt pudding and it was a hit! The only downside to this recipe is that the final result is VERY sweet, so I wouldn’t recommend eating too much, no matter how good it is.

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