Banana Cream Pie

As promised, the second post for the actual pie aspect of this series :)  This is my favorite type of pie, banana cream pie, which was given to me by the mother of one of my best friends.  It's quite easy, but I remember making it once for Pat's family and telling them how easy it was...he mom was like "you're making the custard from scratch!"  As it, it can't be that easy ;)  I have made a few modifications to the recipe, which is how I will post the recipe.  I hope you enjoy this pie as much as I do and if you're too busy to make the whole pie, you can always buy the crust from the freezer section...I won't tell ;)

Ingredients

Ingredients

1/2 cup white sugar

6 tablespoon all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon of salt

2 1/2 cups milk--I use skim milk, although it would probably taste much more rich using whole milk.

1 egg

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 vanilla bean or 1 tablespoon of vanilla bean extract or 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

3 ripe bananas

1 pre-baked 9-inch pie shell--deep dish works best, but I used a regular pie shell.

1/2 cup of heaving whipping cream, whipped

Directions

1.  Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in the top of a double boiler.

2.  Slowly stir in the milk and cook over boiling water until thickened, stir constantly.

Custard before it thickens.

3.  After the custard thickens, cover the mixture for 10 minutes and stir occasionally, every 2 minutes works well.

4.  Beat the egg in a small bowl.  Add a small amount of the custard to the egg to prevent the egg from scrambling once added to the custard.  Combine the egg mixture to the custard and mix constantly for 2 minutes over hot water, not boiling water.

5.  Remove from heat and add the butter and vanilla.

Custard after the addition of all ingredients

6.  Allow mixture to cool for a few minutes.

7.  Slice and arrange the small amount of the bananas in the bottom of the crust shell in an even layer.  Cover the bananas with a portion of the custard.  Arrange another even layer of the bananas on top of the custard.  Cover the bananas with the remaining custard.

8.  Chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

9.  Cover with whipped cream if desired just prior to serving--enjoy!

Completed Pie without Whipped Cream

Here's a new addition to the blog--it's called Don't Let my Mistakes Happen to You!  What is it, is the part of my blog where I tell you what happened/went wrong while I was making the recipe.  So, enjoy and hopefully you'll learn from my mistakes.

Don't Let my Mistakes Happen to You!

I've done the whole, adding a small amount of the hot mixture to the egg thing to prevent scrambling, or cooking the egg, before and never had a problem, except this time...of course, when I need it to be perfect for my blog...wah wah.  Thankfully, it was only mildly scrambled, so it didn't affect the taste of the pie.  I recommend preventing this in the future by adding a larger amount of the custard to the beaten egg.  Then, I would make sure the water wasn't boiling in the double boiler (I think mine was boiling) before adding the egg mixture to the custard.  Theoretically, this should prevent this problem in the future.

Homemade Pie Crust

This is the first post in a series of posts about pie, which I absolutely love.  This first post will be about the homemade crust.  My second post will be about the banana cream pie...that's right, lovely, delicious, decadent, banana cream pie.

Now, to be honest, I've always shied away from homemade crusts because they can be so completely hard to make.  If you handle them too much, they become dense, hard, and not delicious at all.  This recipe however is a bit different in my opinion regarding taste and ingredient list-the crust rises a bit more than I'm used to because of the cake flour.  It can be made many different methods (with a stand mixer, hand-held mixer, mixed by hand, etc) and is pretty easy to whip up.  

Ingredients

1 c. cake flour

1 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. salt

3/4 c. cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/3 inch cubes

7 T. of ice water or heavy cream, or 2 egg whites, lightly beaten

Directions

1.  In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix both flours and the salt on slow for 30 seconds.

2.  Add the butter and combine it with the flour on low to medium for 1 minute.

3.  Add the liquid and mix the dough on low to medium speed for 40 seconds to 2 minutes, until it looks like gravel.  If the mixture is still powdery after two minutes, pinch a small amount together; if it falls apart, add 2 more tablespoons of liquid; if it clumps together, continue mixing.

4.  Flatten the dough into a disk.  If not using right away, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.

5.  Roll dough until it is approximately 2 inches wider than your pie plate.

6.  Place over pie dough and cut around the edge so there is an extra inch of dough hanging over the edge.

7.  Tuck the extra dough under to form a thick boarder.

8.  To flute the edges, press against both sides of the rim of the pie pan to get the pastry to rise up above it.  Press with 2 fingers on 1 side and 1 finger on the other to form the fluted edge.

9.  Blind bake the crust in a pre-heated 400 F oven with pie weights or beans lining the bottom for 15 minutes.  Take the weights out of the bottom and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown.  Thinner shells and pastry with sugar brown more quickly.

To be honest, my boyfriend has made this shell before for a homemade apple pie and it was better.  We were discussing why and we've come to this conclusion: his crusts were thinner because he made a bottom and top from one batch, which I think made it more like a traditional crust.  The other thing I will do in the future is add 1/2 c. white sugar to the flours to make the crust sweet.  I think that I'm going to practicing pie crusts in the future, so look for those posts and learn from my mistakes!