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.